


Fade to Grey

by Team D4NC3 P4RTY (Cephied_Variable)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-04
Updated: 2011-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-24 07:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cephied_Variable/pseuds/Team%20D4NC3%20P4RTY
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New planet, same old damn problems they always had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fade to Grey

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the final round of the [Homestuck Shipping Olympics](http://livejournal.com/~hs-olympics) where it took 4th place in the Collaboration Round. Original format can be seen **[HERE](https://sites.google.com/site/d4nc3p4rtycoll4b/home)**. Credits at the end.

  


_I’d lay down my sword  
if you would take it_


	2. >Dave, Wake Up

“Dave, if you are going to use the many fine facilities of the Harley Ranch, please recite the resort rules!”

“Augh,” was what Dave said first, the sudden flood of white sunlight a shock to his senses even with his shades on. He sat up groggily, disturbing no fewer than four dogs in the process.

“ _Augh_ is not an acceptable response. Please stick to the parameters of the request, Mr Strider!” Jade was little more than a fluffy, dark smudge framed by barn door, but Dave could just imagine the teasing smile tugging at her lips, the way she bit her bottom lip in excitement whenever she thought she was getting an especially good one up on him. He picked some straw out of his hair and sighed.

“Rule number one,” he intoned flatly, “no sleeping in the barn I have a perfectly good guest room and don’t tell me you can’t pick locks I taught you.”

“Good!”

“Rule number two, don’t scare my cow or she will have six heart attacks.”

“Eight now,” Jade corrected gently. “And her newest heart is only two weeks old.”

“ _Jesus_ , Harley.” He did not add ‘ _Jesus Harley that’s not even a cow_.’

She made a tutting noise in the back of her throat and continued: “Rule number three?”

Another sigh as Dave shooed a fifth and sixth dog away in order to retrieve his legs. “There is to be no reference to Terezi Pyrope on the premises.”

“Oh nooo! Not even breakfast yet and you’ve already broken two of the rules!”

“Okay, _that_ one was entrapment.” Dave began to hoist himself to his feet, groping for his sword in the coarse, grey hay. “I object to this Jade you are leading the witn-” – he cut himself off and glanced up to see Jade throwing the blade and scabbard in his direction. Apparently he’d left it by the door when he’d broken in the night before.

“C’mon. I’ll make you eggs and then you can get to work. I need heavy things carried!” She whistled to her dogs and spun on one heel, disappearing into the white light of the great outdoors. Dave closed his fingers around the scabbard of his sword and watched the animals trot after her happily. With a heavy sigh, he followed.

Well okay they weren’t really dogs.

They had a lot of things in common with dogs, like not being bipedal, and having long snouts with unpleasantly soft tongues they enjoyed running stickily all over things and people they liked. They stood about three quarters of a meter tall with long, whip-like tails, folded ears, and leathery coats sort of like an Abyssinian cat left out in the sun too long. They had too many teeth though. Way too many – rowed teeth like sharks. Dave figured it must be an evolutionary by-product of four thousand years of Alternian Oppression, like everything just irrationally grew sixteen sets of teeth every time a troll murdership rolled through. The native word for the creatures was nigh unpronounceable to human tongues, but most people on this planet used the troll word anyway: ‘barkbeast’. Karkat had muttered, the first time Jade came back with one trailing behind her, “ _Dog_.” She’d corrected and collected ten more since. Like Earth dogs, they were carnivorous pack creatures and Jade Harley smelt like all kinds of Alpha. Dave could only remember the name of five of them: Becquerel II, Curie, Rutherford, Roentgen and Sievert. Curie was a huge thing with giraffey splotches of elephant grey and black, and she loved putting her huge, slobbery chin in Dave’s lap while he forced down gooey grey egg goop.

“Want me to call her off?” Jade asked brightly, back turned to him as she shook a beaker gently, salt air whipping her long hair in all directions. The harsh coastline was her laboratory and her labcoat was a spinach-colored sundress wrapped in a poorly knit shawl. She was the only smudge of color on the flat horizon, verdant against the monochrome sea and ashen sand. The shawl was off-green, a mulchy shade of teal that reminded him of –

Dave didn’t exactly _envy_ how at home she was here on the edge of the world, out of place in the universe, playing Mad Scientist for the benefit of their newly adopted home with her ever-increasing pack of wild dog-monsters nipping at her heels as she ambled from farm house to atrium. He didn’t exactly _envy_ it, but her ease made him feel a little more hollow every time he came to visit. It really shouldn’t have been surprising that John and Jade were the world champs at ‘adjusting nicely to insane situations’, but it made Dave feel _lonely_.

 _ not anything you can do about that shit though  
oh yeah just gonna go up and politely request that they pretend to be miserable  
i mean cmon here guys  
im just looking for a little human solidarity _

“Eh, whatever,” Dave answered finally, enduring the giant saliva stain Curie was loving right into his pant leg. “Curie’s a bro. Damage won’t be permanent.”

“She _loves_ John too,” Jade chirped. “Won’t leave him alone for even a second when he comes to visit.”

“Mmm.” Fuck the eggs were _terrible_.

“I think she’d be happier if you two would come and visit more often.”

“You’re being about as subtle as a brick, Jade. Come on, just give me the usual lecture. I’m a big boy, not like it’s gonna make me cry or anything.”

Jade turned to look at him, expression neutral as she gathered her curtain of hair behind one wrist. “Fine. It would be _nice_ and _I would be happier_ if you two came to visit more often. A proper visit, not like you just crashing in my hayloft in the middle of the night!”

“Yup, there it is. Okay I’m about as done with these eggs as I’m gonna get. What’s that you said about lifting heavy things?”

“Ugh, Dave – I’m serious this time. John at least seems to be enjoying whatever it is he’s doing when he disappears for months at a time, and you know Aradia goes with him sometimes. But _nothing_ you’re doing is making things better at all. You’re more distant every time you come by!”

Dave’s expression was impassive. Of course it was impassive – that’s all part of the ‘being distant’ package. He set the stoneware plate down beside him and leant back on his palms as Jade’s lips slowly folded into a pout.

“What?” he said.

“ _What_?” she countered.

“Well come on Jade tell me what I gotta do to be happy because man I just have so many reasons to be ecstatic. Living on a sad, grey, post-colonial xenoplanet was what my Bro always wanted for me.”

He hadn’t meant the harsh edge, not quite. Harsher still with the hint of Texan drawl he’d never managed to completely coach out of his accent. He knew that Jade was trying to launch into some near Egbertian inspirational point that home was where your family was. Unfortunately, there was a six storey tall shark-toothed elephant in the room. The strip of ribbon Dave had wrapped around the hilt of his sword. The reason John had taken up knitting (poorly) and Jade had taken up psychoanalysis (clumsily).

“I’m just trying to say that this is the way things are now, Dave! You’re going to have to live with that. Besides – home is where your family is. And – ”

“I can’t – ”

“ – we’re your family. _All_ of us.”

“ – fucking believe – ”

“Even Karkat.”

“ – I am listening to – ”

“And you know what?”

“ – this kumbaya bullshit.”

“ _I think you should go fucking talk to her you asshole!_ ”

Woah. Jade had her hands on her hips now, which was like the dainty little feral scientist girl battle pose. Dave blinked and opened his mouth to say something, but she wasn’t finished.

“Because I know no one wants to say it, but it’s true! Rose is gone. Rose is gone and I know that you won’t talk to anyone else, but you’ll talk to her so go _fucking talk to her_.”

“Third rule of the Harley Ranch: There is to be no reference to Terezi Pyrope on the premises.”

Jade _snarled_ and tossed her hair in the breeze. “Oh whatever. You know Dave, I only made that rule because I was sick of listening to you whine and sigh about her all the time.”

“I do no – ”

“Anyways, not even Karkat’s heard from her lately. Stop being so immature and just go make up!”

“Look Harley, that’s not gonna work.”

“Oh really? _Why not_.”

“Yeah right. You keep complaining about how I’m not exactly a ray of sunshine these days. TZ’s worse. Can’t add two negative values together and get a good result.”

“Actually,” Jade mused, tapping a finger to her chin as her mood cooled, “you can.”

Dave gave Jade a weird look. “What?”

“That’s how math works. Two negative integers make a positive. Duuuuh.”

“Okay but that’s not real life. Focus here Jade.”

“Math is definitely real life. Focus here, Dave. She probably wants to see you, no matter what you think.”

Dave inhaled sharply, his fingers curling halfway into fists at the thought. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about it. It wasn’t like he hadn’t gotten half way there, all the way there, stood outside like a dumpass shivering in the night air, breathing heavily like some kind of pervert on the wrong end of a CSI episode. It wasn’t like he hadn’t made up a thousand opening lines like _oh hey tz shit got pretty intense last time i came around but no hard feelings lets make out by which i mean make up but i figured out a while ago that its pretty much the same thing to me_.

Nope. Jade might not have understood, but none of that was going to work because –

“Besides – it’s better to be miserable together than miserable alone, isn’t it?”

Well.

It was worth a try.


	3. YEARS IN THE PAST (but not that many)

gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling turntechGodhead [TG]

GC: D4V3  
TG: shit tz this is not the time  
GC: D4V3, HOW 1NJUR3D 4R3 YOU? >:[  
TG: oh lets see im still walking so lets say im nope  
TG: still none of terezis business  
TG: go fufill your creepy blood fetish somewhere else pyrope  
GC: 1 C4NT. YOU JUST BL33D SO 3XQU1S1T3LY. 1 4M RU1N3D FOR GOOD!  
TG: jesus youre fucked  
GC: BUT WH3R3 4M 1 FUCK3D, D4V3? WH3R3? >;]  
TG: ok is this some sort of weird attempt at flirting on your part  
TG: because gotta tell you its not really doing it for me  
TG: also the head is where youre fucked  
GC: >:[  
GC: 1 W4S TRY1NG OUT YOUR M3THOD OF BL4T4NT 1NNU3NDO.  
TG: yeah no leave that to the expert wordsmiths here tz  
TG: you gotta have a license in rhyme to lay down lewd beats about the sticky interspecies biznasty  
TG: its an advanced method  
TG: downright risky business for a rookie like you if youre not careful you might get yourself burned  
TG: were talking real x-rated immolation here  
GC: H3H3H3  
TG: shit  
TG: what now  
GC: D4V3, 1S 1T MY 1M4G1N4T1ON OR D1D YOU JUST 4DM1T TH4T YOU W3R3 FL1RT1NG W1TH M3 TH1S WHOL3 T1M3?  
TG: fuck  
TG: no  
TG: definitely your imagination  
TG: no telling all the sick shit that goes on in there  
GC: HOLD ON, 1M COM1NG TO WH3R3 YOU 4R3!  
GC: YOUR3 GO1NG TO G3T K1LL3D 1F YOU K33P GO1NG 4H34D 4LON3.  
TG: wait  
TG: no stop i dont ne

gallowsCalibrator [GC] has become an idle chum!

TG: damn it terezi

Your name is Dave Strider and you don’t need help especially not from cackling alien girls who don’t know the right way to play out this kawaii desu nurse fantasy. If she had any idea what she was doing, the scene would have played out like her kneeling to gently touch the cuts on your face all oh Strider-kun be more careful I will bandage your nasty leg cut before you get gangrene. Instead she hops down from and ledge and shoves the dirty end of her cane in your face.

“D4V3 G3T UP.”

“oh yeah take my eye out with that thing  
real helpful terezi”

“1M NOT GO1NG TO S4Y 1T 4G41N. G3T UP!”

You grip the cane cautiously and let her yank you to your feet. She grins kind of weirdly at that and you stare at her for a full minute with your hands wrapped around the cane, not moving just trying to figure out if the grin is good or a sign that she plans to consume your flesh.

“NOW TH4T YOUR3 UP L3TS G3T GO1NG! 1TS PR3TTY 3MB4R4SS1NG HOW M4NY T1M3S YOU N33D 4 HYP3R COMP3T3NT 4L13N G1RL TO P1CK YOU UP. L1T3R4LLY! W1THOUT M3 YOU WOULD H4V3 SP3NT TH3 3NT1R3 G4M3 ON YOUR LO4D G4P3R OR W1TH YOUR F4C3 1N TH3 D1RT.”

“wow not even  
those are some hefty delusions of grandeur on a tiny girl  
like leonardo dicaprio trying to pull his obese mama outta bed in that one movie  
sorry kid shes gone  
we need a wrecking ball in here to save her some dignity”

“WH4T?”

“you know what why do i even bother you nev-”

>DAVE: RECIEVE PESTER FROM ECTO-SISTER

“wait”

>DAVE: ANSWER ROSE

Terezi looks at your strangely as you turn away and activate the chat program in your glasses. 

tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

TT: Dave.  
TG: what  
TT: Dave, we need to talk.

You think nothing of it at the time.


	4. >Terezi: Recall Tenets of Alternian Lore

"First," Terezi said, scrawling on the wall as she went. "It is the legislacerator's job to uncover the truth. If none exists, then it falls to the legislacerator to create the truth." Second. Second rule. Back to the basics, Neophyte Pyrope. "Second, the legislacerator does not make mistakes! Third -- "

She licked the chalk lines under the next passage of wall, catching _Torture is a technique; it is not an extreme expression of lawless rage_ , written in purple, and _A person is unjust to the extent that from character and inclination she is disposed to such actions_ , in bright blue -- before they turned to smudges under her tongue. The flavor wasn't right. The last of her chalk was getting old. She pressed her nose up to the stub of the lime green in her hand, and it was still beautiful. "Third, the legislacerator is the living body of the law, inseparable and indistinguishable from its principles."

There was something wrong with that, but Terezi couldn't put her finger on what, exactly. She slid her hand across the rough stone, feebly, trying to wipe away the proof of her error, until all her words were a great green blur.

"The more I see it, the nastier it gets," Dave said, behind her. She heard his rucksack slip from his shoulders into a pile on the ground with his coat, but she didn't turn around to look, she could smell the sweat on his back from across their cave. "Surgeon General's warning: do not feed to crazy troll girls, may cause brain damage and elevated levels of damn, girl, that is the least sexy thing I have ever seen."

Terezi wiped the smudge of blue off the corner of her mouth -- not that he could have seen it under the lights in their cave, from behind his sunglasses. Not that she was going to face him. The highest insult, after all, was to give your opponent your back, to let her know you held her strength in such contempt that you felt no need to guard yourself.

It had taken a week of silence to get him to run off -- he smelled like what passed for barkbeasts on this planet, and so he must have gone to Jade -- and she still was not talking to him, which was the very worst thing one could do to Dave Strider. He had to fill in the gaps. He could not keep his mouth shut if she'd sewed it that way. "Lucy," he said, "I'm home? Christ."

She gave him nothing, and took up her chalk to write, _The principle of efﬁciency cannot serve alone as a conception of justice._ In lavender, just to smell him flinch.

"Look," he said -- good, a tremor in his voice -- pushing his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, "I get it, okay, you're practically blueblooded and shit, the others don't have the same problem, but -- I've got a job. Straight from Kanaya. _We've_ got a job."

" _You_ have a job, Dave. I'm very busy."

"Yeah, yeah, preserving the traditions of your people, I get it, but I want your help. Look, I'm all naked and vulnerable, here, TZ. Heart in my hands, gonna start quoting shitty Dashboard Confessional lyrics in a sec, just for you." He sounded as though the words were being wrung out of him by a galaxy-class clothing ablutor.

"It will be in the city."

Dave flopped down in their only chair, salvaged from the asteroid base. "Bet it's gonna be violent. More fun than scaring the piss out of everything in a ten-mile radius. Don't even have to talk to anyone if you don't want." She crossed her arms over her chest. "No, seriously," he muttered. "Trying to apologize, here, don't mind me."

"I'm sorry I tried to bite you," she said. She _almost_ was. The argument itself was a blur, was irrelevant, but at some point he'd called her a monster, and something in her -- something exhausted and frustrated and unbecoming -- had snapped. At great length.

"You tried to tear my face off."

"Yes, I did that, too," Terezi said. She heard him smile, smelled the flash of the white of his teeth. "I thought very hard about removing some very important internal organs! But it would have been counterintuitive."

"Fuck, TZ."

"You don't have back-ups. Or redundancies. A waste of my time, not even good enough to sharpen my claws."

"I forbid you to get off on this," Dave said, but it was half-hearted and bland. Terezi threw the chalk at him anyway. "I should just get out the whips and buckets, shouldn't I -- " He dodged the first piece, and caught the second one before it reached the floor, then walked up to her (closer than he'd come in weeks, in _ages_ ; she'd forgotten that she barely came up to his shoulder) and pressed the chalk into her hands and closed her fingers around it, careful of her claws. "We going?"

"Yes," she said. "We are."


	5. YEARS IN THE PAST (but not that many)

tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering gallowsCalibrator [GC]

TT: Terezi?  
TT: I have a favor I need to ask of you.  
GC: TH1S 1S 4BOUT D4V3, 1SN’T 1T?  
TT: Yes.  
TT: I believe my dear brother is making a mistake.  
TT: As such, I will be taking matters into my own hands.  
GC: 4ND YOU W4NT M3 TO M4K3 SUR3 H3 DO3S NOT 1NT3RF3R3  
TT: Precisely.  
TT: I need you to be my wingwoman, as it were, and distract him long enough for me to take his place.  
GC: TH4T SHOULD B3 34SY  
GC: 1 H4V3 SOM3 N3W DR4W1NGS FOR H1M 4NYW4YS  
GC: NO W41T, 1 H4V3 4 B3TT3R 1D34  
GC: BUT H4V3 YOU T4LK3D TO H1M Y3T?  
TT: Not yet. If I had, he would be next to me right now.  
TT: I will be saying my necessary goodbyes before I--well.  
GC: D13  
TT: Yes. The befestertounged lamb, sacrificed on the altar of the Game.  
TT: It's best if he doesn't know my intentions until it is too late to stop me.  
GC: Y34H  
GC: 1 W1LL B3 SUR3 TO K33P TH1S 1NFORM4T1ON CONF1D3NT14L  
GC: SEL3CT1V3 S3CR3CY 1S ON3 OF TH3 MOST 1MPORT4NT TOOLS 4 S33R H4S  
TT: I knew I could count on you.  
TT: I will be arriving at my destination shortly.  
TT: Before I do, however, I have one more thing to ask of you.  
TT: Keep an eye on him, would you? Jade and John mean well, but it is my professional opinion that they do not understand his nature as well as you. I trust that you will be able to prevent him from running off and being stupid, quite frankly.  
TT: If nothing else, your words will give him pause. If you are fortunate, he may actually listen!  
GC: DO YOU R34LLY TH1NK SO >:?  
GC: D4V3 1S V3RY OBST1N4T3 4ND M4D3 H1S M1ND UP SOM3 T1M3 4GO TO STOP L1ST3N1NG TO 4NYTH1NG 1 S4Y  
GC: 1 W1LL DO WH4T YOU 4SK 1N SP1R1T OF OUR GR4ND FR3N3MYSH1P  
GC: BUT 1 C4NNOT M4K3 4NY PROM1S3S  
TT: I think you would be surprised.  
GC: >:T  
TT: Thank you, Terezi. Words cannot adequately express my gratitude.  
GC: NO ROS3  
GC: 1 SHOULD B3 TH4NK1NG YOU  
GC: SO  
GC: TH4NKS >:]  
TT: You are welcome.  
TT: .....  
TT: >:]

tentacleTherapist [TT] has ceased pestering gallowsCalibrator [GC]


	6. >Be a Curiosity

No one looked at them when they went to the city, but Dave could feel the rhothiazein eyes on the back of his neck. Five years, and he was still a curiosity. Terezi walked a few steps ahead of him, daring them to so much as look at her funny, and they didn't.

And the city made his head hurt, every single time. It was all tilted off-center and enormous and sprawling, like a fat grey oil well bubbling up from the open rig of the plain. The buildings around him were made of something that was half-plant, half-stone, and they twisted at angles that were all wrong to look at. "Got a scent yet?" he asked, and caught himself touching the sword strapped to his back for reassurance.

The hum of the city swelled and receded; half of the rhothi language on this continent was way out of the range of human hearing, Jade said, and the aliens – the _people_ – themselves were a full foot taller than Dave. It made his head hurt. "I would not miss Karkat's blood anywhere," she said. "Not even in a seething pail of – "

"Whoa," Dave said, "slow your roll."

" – incestuous slurry," Terezi finished, and stopped under one of those twisted archways that ran over the streets and served no purpose but to get shit on by winged things. He caught up to her and took his time at a stall, examining some yellow-grey turnip things and greeting the owner in his broken Alternian, while Terezi sniffed the air in search of where Karkat and Kanaya were this year. "West," she said, and grabbed him by the sleeve of his coat to drag him off. "Dave, it's like I'm _blind_."

Dave let her. She was tracking, she was hunting, she looked excited for the first time in ages. "Well, I mean, if you haven't noticed, I hate to break it to you..."

"I had never been to a city this big on Alternia." Terezi let him go, but not before pulling him to the side to avoid a line of heavy-laden rhothiazein. So much for not being able to see. The aliens were light grey, like teenagers "I don't know how they keep everyone in _order_ , there's too many of them in one place!" But she sounded like she was smiling. Good signs.

She paused again at the closest thing this city had to a street corner, because, shit, there weren't even _streets_ , just vast thoroughfares and switchbacks almost too narrow for even Terezi to fit through, laid out according to some internal logic beyond Dave's ability to understand. Beyond his thinkpan's processing capacity. His ken, even. _Ken_ – too Rose, too Rose, he wasn't going to get all weird about that, not now when he had to be the tough one.

"Are we at a crossroads?"

"Intersection," Dave said, glancing around, and added, "five way," even though it was probably technically six. "Got a fix?"

"Karkat is bleeding." She turned up to look at him. "Close your eyes, the smell is distracting me."

And of course it would've been too easy for Karkat to just give them the fucking address, but _IF YOU CAN'T TRACK THE ONLY TWO TROLLS IN THE CITY DOWN WITHOUT HELP YOU'RE NOT WORTH HIRING FOR SHIT, SO FIGURE IT OUT_ ; Dave shut his eyes behind his sunglasses and only realized Terezi was walking away when a short rhothiazein tapped him on the shoulder and pointed, letting its deep-cleft tongue loll out in what was a rhothi smile.

She was fucking with him. That was a good thing. He got up next to her, shoved his hands into his coat pockets, and scanned the crowd for danger. They weren't going to attack him, he wasn't a troll, but it had taken ages for them to get over pelting Terezi with waste, so he hovered over her shoulder. "Stop it," she said, the second he glared a rhothi off. "If I want to scare them, I'll do it myself, Dave." To demonstrate her point, she bared her teeth at a group of rhothiazein, and they all seized up in ancestral terror. Only for her.

"Make them more nervous when you're in the city, why don't you," he said. "God, that is the best idea you've ever had, we're gonna get a big brass band to play next time, break out the ticker tape, Terezi Pyrope the Great has arrived."

She elbowed him in the ribs hard enough to bruise him.

Karkat and Kanaya's new place was on the top floor of a vast dome-shaped building, and, well, the buildings didn't get higher than three stories. But the rhothiazein didn't do stairs, so he couldn't even make that joke, and they were stuck with a soft ramp that Terezi had to grip with her claws and toes and teeth to get them up; Dave's boots found little purchase on the surface, and he had to hold onto her belt and the back of her jacket to clamber up behind her. The aliens walking past them up and down the ramp like it was no big deal – there was a better word for it, they were _slides_ – gave them what Dave knew by now were funny looks.

"This blows," he said, and tried to adjust his grip. "Have I mentioned lately how hard this blows?"

"You might have." Terezi pretended to lose her footing. Dave let out the least cool sound he'd made since the first time his bro ambushed him with Lil' Cal. "How did you do this without me, Dave?" Or the time in the next city over when he'd been cornered by a bunch of scientists who'd wanted to study him, and had to hack his way out through their spongy white-grey forms. "Dave." Or coming face to face, sword to sword, balls to walls with Bec Noir while --

"Dave."

She'd stopped climbing, turned around to look at him. Her jaw was still unhinged. If he hadn't been able to see every one of her teeth, he would have been having inappropriate thoughts, plus no human neck could have rotated that much. But. Well. "Yeah,” he said, "hey, we're gonna be late, get going."

"Yes, Dave," she said, and bit the slide again to start dragging them up. When she opened her mouth to spit out some teal saliva – shit, _that_ got them looks – "I am your personal two-legged transportation device, I shall do what ever you say."

"Who's taking you out on this job?"

"You are, oh dauntless friendleader – "

"Yeah, exactly."

Terezi jerked her whole body to the side, so that Dave was sprawled out, holding onto her with just one hand. "You are not doing me a favor," she said, and dragged her behind him. The drop was _long_. "You are making use of me. This is dangerous, isn't it, Strider, and you need backup."

– whatever she wanted to think. "Kanaya was fuzzy about it." He righted himself as she went. "Wanted to talk to me in person. The comm's always bugged for us seven, you know."

"I know."

Not that she'd talked to anyone in ages, Dave thought. "You got a problem with doing something illegal?"

"What is legal?" They reached the top of the ramp and sat there for a moment, Terezi panting and wiping some green-blue sweat off her forehead; one of the aliens edged around them as though they weren't there. "The law of this planet is absurd."

Someone was bitter. "Yeah?"

Sniffing the air like a tiny bloodhound, she led them down the spiral of the hallway. "There," she said, stopping. He'd been here before. "The color. Under his skin. Right there."

"Why only Karkat, huh? Why aren't you sniffing after Maryam, you too good, you still got some scarlet feelings for – "

"Kanaya's blood color is too close to mine." She rapped on the wall marked with Karkat and Kanaya's apartment glyph. "Distinct! But not distinct enough to pick out." She knocked again, harder.

In a too-slick motion, the wall slid opened up of its own accord. Open plan apartment, and Karkat sat in a circle with a bunch of aliens, flailing his hands around and shouting something about them all being idiots.

And then the meeting was over.

" _Herbivores_ ," Terezi grumbled, flashing her teeth at the little boy (it was probably a boy, there were like seven sexes) staring at... not her, not a _person_ , but a highblood. The highest highblood left in the universe, the monster under the bed. There was Kanaya, but Kanaya was practically outside the hemospectrum or whatever - Aradia's explanation had flown over his head and off into the next galaxy cluster - and she had Karkat vouching for her, too.

The rest of the aliens gave Dave polite shoulder-wiggles, and ignored Terezi completely.

She stood a little closer to him, until he wanted to get all sappy and wrap an arm around her skinny waist, but now Karkat looked up at them, wiped the dust secretions off his palms from where he'd rubbed them with the aliens and got up from his stool.

"Where's Kanaya?" Terezi asked, before Karkat could even get the first word of his rant out.

"Out lifting heavy shit for people." Karkat adjusted his tie, which would have probably been red if the light on the planet didn't wash every color out to some kind of grey. "How do I look, Striderdouche, she modeled my suit off one of yours."

Like the good kind of lawyer, Dave thought, even though he was sure he looked better in one. Not that he'd worn one in years."I'm just here for the business, miss."

A couch-like thing sprang up from the floor – because they needed one; rhothi technology was pimp as hell sometimes – and Karkat waved them onto it with one blunt-clawed hand. "Look at our master mercenary, here, when the fuck did you get so professional?" He sat back down on this stool, up higher than the two of them, looking down. Deliberately.

"Gotta behave myself for my ladyfriend here," he said, letting his accent spread like tar over his voice, even if they wouldn't recognize it, "can't have her getting all scandalized and shit over us talking about pails and 'rails."

Karkat snorted, crossed his legs, and took in the two of them in. Five years on this planet, and Dave knew he'd sprung up half a foot (and only still had clothes because of Kanaya). Terezi was thinner, and not just because her flesh and muscle had refined themselves over her bones in the same way Karkat's had. There was something unhealthy about it. Karkat raised his eyebrows at Dave, but didn't comment on it either way. "You two cannot fuck this up in any way shape or form."

"It pays?" Terezi asked. When she sat, she lounged, and took up more space than she had any right to. Dave didn't have the heart to shove her.

"No, shit, I'm a stingy motherfucker who wants to hire the best muscle-for-hire on the planet for nothing, and also Dave Strider, yes, it pays" – if it had been anyone but Karkat, his voice would have softened, but instead it got louder, bouncing off the walls and ceilings – "and why haven't you two moved into this god-fucking-awful city yet, anyway, it's been ages, you'd get _work_ here. Real work. Me and Kanaya could introduce you to some people."

"Karkat." Kanaya's voice filled the room like a perfume would. The wall shut itself behind her with a whisper, and Karkat piped down – for once in his miserable life – at the sight of her. "Did you offer our guests a drink?"

"It's Dave and Terezi," Karkat said.

Kanaya pulled out a tube of lipstick, and both Karkat and Terezi flinched visibly, but all Kanaya did was give herself a touch-up in that weird not-red shade. "Guests," she said. Her skin was paler than the walls, and gave off that faint glow that had never stopped weirding Dave out.

"We're cool," said Dave, "really, we're cool."

Kanaya had gotten tall, for a troll, almost up to his nose, and she loomed better than anyone he'd met, except for – Rose. "You are not cool, Dave. You are staying for dinner. And then we'll talk business. This is my job for you, not Karkat's."

"We weren't going to tell them that," came Karkat's grumble. Kanaya patted him, _papped_ him on the knee, and he relaxed. He said, to the two of them, "We've got sorta-hoofbeast, tastes-like-cluckbeast, and something grey and leafy that one rhothi kid gave me, fuck if I know what it is, but it told me to boil it, so we're going to boil the hell out of it and hope it doesn't send us screaming for the excretion basin, sound good?"

"I'm not eating plants," Terezi said.

The floor sprouted a chair for Kanaya, and she sat down, the material of her light grey column of a dress falling smooth over her thighs. Same grey as Karkat's suit. Dave would bet a million boonbucks she still had the hole in her gut they'd found her with, but her middle was wrapped with a red-grey sash. "Too bad."

"You're not my lusus."

"And our lusii were sacrificed on the altar of Sgrub, and would not have cared what we ate, so long as we kept _them_ fed." Kanaya and Karkat stood up in the same instant, and the motions were freaky similar. But they'd followed each other's every move for the last four years. "I am offering you food as a guest," Kanaya said. "You will eat the food. It's rhothi tradition."

"And human," Dave felt the need to mutter.

"We're trolls," Terezi said.

"Irrelevant. You're being pointlessly difficult, and I will not stand for it."

Kanaya's claws pricked into the fabric of her skirts, Dave could practically see the spades dancing in the air around the two of them, with canes and tophats, and tiny bowties, just for effect – Dave got what kismeses were perfectly well – until Karkat made a hiccupy cat-cough sound and the two of them glanced at him from the corner of their slitted eyes. "You're both being a couple of assholes, and I'm saying this with Dave in the room," he said, and Dave offered him a two-for-one special on flipped birds. Karkat rolled his eyes and went on, "What I'm saying is, let's all shut the fuck up and eat some dinner and talk business; I thought we left our endless bullshit highblood posturing on that _rock_."

Without missing a beat, Kanaya said, "He's right," but Dave couldn't miss the look that crossed her face. But at least the twelve of them had gotten to meet before everyone started dying. Kanaya caught his eye, and her face said, _We're going to talk later_ , and fortunately Terezi and Karkat had already drifted into the kitchen, bickering the whole way, and didn't notice a thing.

The tastes-like-cluckbeast was prepared without any kind of flavoring, because trolls ate their meat raw. The cooking was only as a concession to Dave's frail human digestive machinery, and it was dry and didn't even taste much like chicken, or like anything, but he could eat it without dying and it filled his stomach. He didn't remember what Earth food tasted like, anyway. Sometimes, a flash of chipotle would ghost over his tongue, or he'd suddenly recall what biting into a taco with warm beef and fresh lettuce tasted like, and he realized he was staring into his food and took another hearty bite, chewing and doing his best to smile at Karkat, who'd cooked it and bitched the whole time.

"So what's this job?" Terezi said, once they'd finished. She licked some gore out from under her claws, then speared what looked like a bifurcated kidney on her index finger and chewed on it like bubblegum.

"What the rhothiazein have," Karkat said, "is a gang problem. In this city. And they're all wetting their pants and squalling like wigglers without their chew toys, which, fair enough, these are some scary fuckers, so of course some concerned citizens run to the scarier trolls and ask for a hand."

"Makin' a name for yourself." Dave finished the last of his meat. Some of it came back up in his throat in a hot wave, and he swallowed hard and tried to be smooth about thumping on his chest.

Kanaya put her hand on Karkat's shoulder, not exactly familial, but not properly bros, either. "You know what we do."

"Deal brokers," said Terezi. She spat out the kidney-whatever and picked one of her teeth; Karkat picked his, too.

"Organizers." There was still a bit of bodily fluid – whatever it was, it wasn't blood – on Kanaya's plate, and she ran a finger through it and sucked on it. "I must object to your disdain."

"Don't even," Dave said, "don't even object to her _face_ , Terezi, we are not doing this."

Terezi elbowed him right in the spot she'd elbowed him before, and Karkat almost smiled. This close. Just another half an inch, and Dave could've taken pictures and sold them to a tabloid for millions. "What we want you to do is cut off the organization's head. At the top. Deliver it to us in a basket, got it, that too hard?"

"Perhaps you should grunt a bit, Karkat, I don't think you've implied heavily enough that you think them stupid."

"No, just Dave."

"Rhododendrons can't do it themselves?" Dave gave in to the temptation to pick his own teeth, and felt self-conscious about his flat nails and weak hands.

" _Rhothiazein_ ," Karkat said, his face already getting red.

"Yeah, that's what I said, rhothiazein, didn't you hear me, TZ? I heard me. Loud and clear. Sure your hearing's not going?"

"Yes," Terezi said, "absolutely. Rhothiazein." She cleaned under her nail with a flick of her long tongue that had Dave trying not to stare or wonder if it was prehensile. "Karkles, you have to give us more to work on, we are not mind readers" -- and here Terezi touched one of her eyes, probably not by accident, judging by the frowns that twisted Karkat's and Kanaya's mouths. "We need names, locations."

Karkat shook himself out of it first. "You think we weren't going to give you those?"

"Dave," Kanaya said. "Outside."

Terezi and Karkat were too busy glaring at each other to care.

It was evening already, and the city was suffused with a dull white glow that rose and fell as the part-living material of the buildings breathed. "It's good for him," Kanaya said, leaning against the railing that had seeped from the balcony. None of the apartments around them had railings. The second moon was in the sky tonight, and Dave imagined that if he squinted hard enough he could see the spot they'd crash-landed on it. "And her?"

For about two seconds, he thought about telling Kanaya where to stick it (where the Green Sun didn't shine no more) or where to go (right to hell, because it was none of her business) – none of her nosy business, except that it was. And this wasn't the Harley Ranch. He could tell himself that she'd backed him into a corner later. "She hasn't taken any work in months. She mopes around and hunts. Says she's preserving ancient Alternian tradition."

"I take it you need more chalk."

"We need a bigger fuckin' cave, is what we need, she's running out of wall."

"Perish the thought." Something crashed inside, and the sound of Terezi's cackle drifted out to the two of them, followed by Karkat shouting something. Kanaya's smile was two parts indulgent to one part annoyed. "Karkat keeps himself too busy to think. I don't know whether I would trade places with you."

"You wouldn't."

"No," Kanaya said. "I wouldn't. Give Terezi something to tear apart."

"Yeah, that was the idea – "

She shook her head, slow, like she felt bad for him. "I meant – give her _screams_ , Dave. Give her sentient, thinking flesh to tear into. We're killers."

"Not Karkat or Aradia," Dave said.

"By design." Kanaya said. "By necessity. It's in my blood, too, though I was never going to go off-world and conquer. I was destined to serve the Mother in the birthing caverns, and never to see the sun again, from the moment my place in the hemospectrum became apparent. And I would have lived for hundreds of years. This," she said, and gestured out at the heartbeat-steady pulse of the city's lights, "is preferable. On some level. I disgust myself every time I think it."

"Yeah?"

"But guilt is a worthless human concept."

Should've seen that coming. Dave ran a hand through his hair and debated punching her, but trolls hit back harder, and his hands were shaking, anyway. Anyway. Anyway. "Aradia gave me the fate argument two years ago," he said, "the one about inevitability, but – "

"Fuck that?"

"'Til it can't stand straight. 'Til the planet's all wobbling on its axis and shit." But then he caught Kanaya eyeing him up like that, and she had only Karkat to feed from while the rest of them roamed, and the seven of them had an arrangement, so he pulled up his sleeve, exposing his veins. Best to get it over with. And when had he gotten so pale? It was probably just the moonlight. Her fangs sank into his wrist like butter, and when she'd taken her fill, she put a bandage from the pocket of her dress over the marks while he shuddered. "How's the vintage, should I have let it breathe first?"

"I don't know what that means," Kanaya said.

"Yeah, never mind," he said, "and about the guilt thing – "

"You have no reason to lie to me."

He had no reason to spill his guts to her, either. Not about that. Even if she'd been flushed for Rose like every disturbingly poetic metaphor involving red-rimmed sunrises reflected on still waters Dave could think of. "Later." He ran his thumb over the edges of the bandage, looked at the rhothiazein family on the balcony across the thoroughfare from them. "Yeah. We should go keep them from killing each other."

"An evasion worthy of your sister."

"Whatever."

"I never got to meet her – not in the flesh. I would have liked to. I'm glad I didn't. It would hurt more, don't you think? But for all of that" – she turned to gaze out at the city and then looked at him over her shoulder, and he knew she was being theatrical – "I miss her. And how is Jade, have you seen her lately?"

"She's fine," he said, throat constricting, Kanaya had done that on purpose, "looking a little tired."

"That won't do." Kanaya pushed off the balcony and walked toward the wall, which went translucent in anticipation of parting before her. "Hm. Tell her to come visit us."

Which told Dave more than he wanted to know about the three of them, ever. The wall closed halfway up behind her, leaving him out on the balcony with his thoughts, and the rise-and-fall of the city's lights to comfort him.


	7. YEARS IN THE PAST (but not that many)

Your name is TEREZI PYROPE, and you have no right to be this tired. You do not. Next to you, the John human is shaking from exhaustion - and how frail he looks, up close - but he keeps his watch over Jade and Dave like a loyal barkbeast. He's sitting over them on the corrugated steel floor; Karkat does the same for Kanaya and Aradia.

The game's mechanics are fading away, now that Sgrub has been exorcized from your universe. And you're trapped here. Now that Maid and Sylph - Knight and Witch - your heroes of Time and Space, but probably only for an hour or so longer, the contents of your captchalogues and fetch modi alike have ejected themselves onto the floor - have piloted you out of the farthest ring, into the orbit of this pale planet, it falls to you to steer the asteroid to safety.

 

K4RK4T, OH F34L3SS L34D3R, HOW DO YOU 3XP3CT M3 TO L4ND TH1S TH1NG  
TH1S 1S 4BSURD  
1 C4NNOT B3L13V3 W3 4R3 DO1NG TH1S

and i can't believe we're alive!

 

John's exhilaration sounds brittle and forced at the very best. You don't know whether it's worse to have lost one of four, or eight of twelve. There is no balance to be found on this scale.

 

Y3S TH3R3 1S TH4T

TEREZI. LESS TALKING, MORE FLYING. FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK.

karkat, be nice! we're all really tired!

AND YOU, JOHN, GO TO SLEEP WITH THOSE TWO, YOU'RE DRIVING ME

insane? hahahahaha  
but no i have to wait for jade to wake up, she will want to see me.  
and dave too! they've been through a lot.

JOHN. GO TO SL33P. K4RK4T 4ND 1 W1LL T4K3 C4R3 OF 3V3RYTH1NG!  
DONT YOU TRUST US?

oh  
yes, i guess so...

 

It doesn't take much more nagging to get him to lay down on the other side of Jade, with her in the middle of him and Dave, the two of them shielding her. Not protecting her. John snuggles into her side and his eyes fall shut, and Karkat, across the room, makes a disgusted sound and flops on his back.

 

1S TH3R3 4 PROBL3M

DOES IT LOOK LIKE THERE'S A PROBLEM?  
NO, REALLY, LET'S PURSUE THIS LINE OF INQUIRY TO THE END OF THE FUCKING RHETORICAL PIER UNTIL WE FALL OFF AND GET TORN TO SHREDS BY FIGURATIVE SEABEASTS, THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT DISCUSSION AND WE NEED TO HAVE IT RIGHT THIS INSTANT.

W34K!

WHATEVER  
THANK FUCK WE HAD THREE GOD TIER PLAYERS

Y3S

The front of John's shirt is still splattered with Jade's blood from where he killed her on her quest bed when Kanaya wouldn't. You let Karkat talk, and talk, and talk, and you get distracted at the last second and crash hard into one of the planet's moons, kicking up rock and dust on the external viewscreens. This is why they don't make spaceships out of asteroids.

After an hour of searching, the two of you find the dead Alternian orbital warship and download the information from it using some of Sollux's leftover programs. Grave-robbery double reacharound. The patrol called these aliens 'Greys.' Herbivorous. Planet: mining colony. Air breathable for trolls, but not ideal. Populace highly intelligent, would be on the brink of making the leap to space if left alone for more than a quarter of a sweep.

You wait until Karkat leaves the room to try hailing the warship, just in case there's even one troll left alive on it. You'd take a seadwelling prick, if it meant that there were others like you out there in the universe, spread out over the crumbling ruins of your race's empire.

No reply.

W3 SHOULD GO DOWN 4ND S33 WH4T W3 C4N S4LV4G3

s0unds like a plan

 

There's really no talking to Aradia, though. Karkat gets back and rushes to help Kanaya to her feet when she stirs. You ignore them. You keep your nose and tongue firmly to the screen and try not to pay attention to the humans - to anything but the data scrolling down the screen. And you still flinch when Dave wakes up.

 

fuck my heads killing me

y0u think y0urs hurts

yeah whatever aradia we can whip em out and do the time powers wang measuring contest later  
wheres rose

dave, i am really really really sorry...

oh  
right  
i remember now  
no its cool  
its cool

 

You can smell the pink ribbon he has tied around his wrist. You hear every motion when he takes off his sunglasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, shoulders hunched over. The rest of the room fusses over Jade when she wakes up, and he drifts over to sit on the table next to Sollux's computer terminal.

 

D4V3, 1 4M 4SS3MBL1NG 4N 3XPLOR4TORY P4RTY  
W3 H4V3 LOC4T3D 4 W4RSH1P! 4 W4RSH1P OF TH3 4LT3RN14N 3MP1R3  
1 N33D YOUR K33N COOLK1D 3Y3S

sure

YOU KNOW 1T W4SNT YOUR F4ULT

can we not

JUST S4Y1NG!

some other time ok

OK4Y

It turns out that the Greys have already made that leap to space. You meet a party of them on the same warship you're trying to plunder. You can only smell them by their near-absence of a smell, and they're twice the height of a full-grown troll, with got double-hinged knees and powerful legs for speed; you suspect that the only reason they don't kill the seven of you on sight is because you're children, or because of the three humans in your midst, or because Karkat's cut his arm on a spiky edge of something and they see his cherry red blood.

Their real species name is unpronounceable on troll or human tongues. Jade refuses to call them 'Greys,' and she and Kanaya pore over a dictionary - one of Rose's dictionaries, judging from the way Dave hovers around you and stays far, far away from the two of them - on the shuttle down to the planet and come up with 'rhothiazein,' which comes out singing in Alternian and flat in Human.

None of the rhothiazein will talk to you. Not one of them will so much as look at you.

After six months on the planet, you understand why. After a year, you avoid the city. A year and a half in, Kanaya and Karkat find Dave work as a mercenary, and you put aside your attempts at studying rhothi law and put your other talents to good use. It's the least you can do for him.


	8. > Receive Mission

  


Karkat smelled like well-kept dust and grey suits that disguised all the seething red of his blood just as well as his grey Sufferer-sign t-shirts used to, which meant _not at all_. When the balcony door shut behind Kanaya and Dave he scowled at her, screwed up his face like she's the best frustrating thing he'd ever, ever met.

"So what did your rhothiazein do that was so terrible that Kanaya thought I could handle fixing it better than you could?" she asked him, just to watch him flinch. It was nice when he did, right on schedule, that little squaring of his shoulders and pulling up to his full height. He used to be shorter than her. It was funnier then.

"Not _my_ rhothiazein. _My_ rhothiazein are too fucking busy worrying about being mutilated like they're pouncebeast food and the pouncebeast is really gog-damn bored."

"Mutilated," she said, rolling the word around on her tongue.

"Alternian-style. Hacked-up, blood spread around, little alien kids snatched off the street down by the docks and cut down when they can't run away fast enough –"

"Just like home."

"Yeah, and doesn't that leave a bad taste in their mouths."

Terezi folded her legs in, heels on her chair and elbows propped on the bony parts of her knees. She grinned at him. "They finally get rid of us and now they're doing it to themselves. They're culling the undesirables? From the _herd_?"

"You wouldn't be so fucking cheerful about it if they'd come to you and asked you to make it stop," Karkat said.

"They'd never come to me," Terezi told him sweetly, and laughed.

Karkat shouted at her. "I'm doing you a fucking favor, Terezi! A whole faction of rhothiazein crawled out of their load-gaper long enough to ask Kanaya to scare the shit out of this gang of imitation troll street thugs, at huge risk to their position in the next quarterly election, not that you care about that, and there is _no one_ even remotely capable of figuring out who these people are who is scarier than you."

 _No one alive_ , Terezi thought. "I am simply the best there is, is that what you're saying?"

"Fuck," Karkat said. He's so eloquent, Karkles. Fearlessly leading all these aliens in his grey, grey suit. "Yeah. They want to buy worse Alternian horror than what they can cook up on their own? They can buy themselves Alternian justice."

"True justice," Terezi said, and thought JUST1C3 even though Trollian hadn't worked in years, "requires the law."

The door opened behind them, and Dave came back in, Kanaya trailing him in a cloud of ozone and white. Terezi licked her lips. There was a fresh bandage on Dave's wrist and under it was candy-bright red, distracting cherry syrup. Kanaya'd gotten her mouth all over it.

She unfolded from her chair. "Dave," she said, cracking her knuckles, "we have an _investigation_."

Dave came over close, and shot Karkat a look that she could hear even through the sunglasses. "Did you give her the names?" he asked.

Karkat tossed something at him, a wad of paper. Dave snatched it up out of the air reflexively, and unfolded it. "The Saline Herbivore? What is this, the world's most crappy-ass alien bar?"

"It's a translation," Karkat sneered. "That's where some of this gang get smashed out of their thinkpans. According to my contacts. It's down by the docks."

"Your contacts," Dave drawled.

"His _contacts_ ," Terezi said. "It's politics, Dave, plant-eating alien politics. But it pays. Let's go."

Sometimes, when Dave looked between her and Karkat like that, like he was relieved and trying not to smile, she thought he might actually feel _pity_ for her. The idea made her a little sick, prickles all the way down her spine.

____________________________________________________________

This city was built around a river, half on one side, half on the other. The water was two shades bluer than the sloping, broken-down buildings it lapped against, but they all smelled mostly grey to her. This whole planet made Terezi feel like she was covered in sopor slime, everything hazy and faded. She bared her teeth at a passing rhothiazein who smelled just a little too pleased with itself and heard it skitter down the docks and into the water, slide and splash and gone.

The docks were slick under her feet, dark plant matter warm from the dull sun, covered with other, more slimy plants. Even if the rhothiazein didn't eat not-finbeasts and not-tentaclebeasts, they strung them up just the same for their leather, huge piles of rotted scaly things on tables with equally stinking rhothiazein hawking them to one another.

"Dave," she said, leaning in, making him scramble to keep his footing, "Dave, buy me a tentaclebeast on a stick."

"Do I look like I'm made of boonbucks?"

"No, you look like you're made of – "

"Yeah," he said, leading her to the nearest stand, "all right, sure, this is a carnival, I am here to win you slimy weird octopi by intimidating innocent rhododendrons with my sword while you flutter your eyelashes and swoon."

"You're not the one doing the intimidating," she said.

"Hey, I am pretty fuckin' scary," Dave muttered. The rhothiazein were too tall to loom at, even for Dave, so he stood nonchalantly a little bit too near them instead and let her point out which squirming grey baby horrorterror she wanted.

She bit into it. It gushed. Under the sediment of the skin, it tasted like pure black, seawater and ink, and the flavor hit her like one of Karkat's sloppy stray punches.

  


"Is it rubbery," Dave asked her, as though wasn't hovering over her shoulder.

"The most rubbery," she said. "Bluh." Not-tentaclebeast ran down her chin and she stretched her tongue out to lick it up, trying not to seem too desperate for it.

The rhothiazein they bought it from was watching her. Its eyes were on her teeth. It should have been watching her claws. It was more scared of her than the whole huge heaving grey river behind it. She's not really the monster he was afraid of. Eridan would have eaten the fisherman instead of the tentaclebeast, and then fed all four of its rhothi lusii – _dams and sires_ – to Feferi's lusus, but, then, Eridan was born to the slaughter.

Terezi was just the _law_. Or she would have been.

"Thank you for the food," she said to the stallkeeper, cheerful as she could manage. It cringed and refused to accept the money Dave held out.

"Done antagonizing the locals?" Dave kicked at some of the plant matter.

"I am discovering the lay of the land, coolkid," she says. "Now, for my next trick – I will find The Saline Herbivore." She spins him around by shoving his shoulder and points. "That is the most disreputable building that also has a sign with a bottle glyph on it."

Dave took a second to translate the letter-glyphs. "It says 'The Salty Lass'," he said. "Right?"

"Karkat translates badly," Terezi assured him, and headed straight for it; the wall parted before her in a rush, like it couldn't get out of her way fast enough. When it _slurped_ shut behind behind them, the aliens sitting at the bar turned to look. A door, she thought, would have been more effective, more _dramatic_ , but one did what one must. The biggest, oldest of them got to its feet.

“This is a private bar, troll,” it said.

Terezi grinned, spreading her hands apart. “I heard,” she said, “that some people who drink here like to hunt down undesirable citizens for fun.”

All the other aliens were watching her now. “Do I have the right bar? Which of you think that the best way to take care of criminals and failures and debtors is to spread them all over the street in pieces?" She smiled at them. "Because it sounds about right to _me_."

That same big alien had a carved club, a piece of wood for bashing in heads, and it unhooked it from the belt on its hips. Terezi could have knocked it away, back when she still had her cane.

“But I’m a troll,” she said. “Culling is what we do.”

"What _she_ does," said Dave, hovering over her shoulder, breaking the rhythm of her speech, but the pause was useful, too.

“So why don’t you tell me which of you especially like pretending you’re as good as we were at keeping the peace, and I won’t demonstrate just how Alternian justice _really_ worked,” she finished.

“Fuck that,” the rhothiazein said, “your kind never understood us,” and swung at her.

She might not have her cane anymore, but she had her _claws_ , and the alien was near enough. She ducked under the club, came in close and raked them up his belly. Jerking them out took effort, like prying herself out of a block of spongy wood or the bellies of plush senators. The gashes oozed grey, slowly. This rhothaizein was old -- it wouldn’t lose fluid fast enough to do her any good. “I understand you,” she said. The next swing clipped her on the side of her horn, enough to smart. She hooked into tough alien flesh, twisted. “I understand your law, I studied it, your law doesn't let you do _anything_ like what you want to do to each other --”

There was another one behind her. More than one. She could hear their breathing, the heaviness of their footsteps. Dave's sword slid out of its sheath, but she didn't _want_ him to help, she wanted to fix this perversion with her own bare hands. It was her solemn duty.

“You can't tell us what we can't do," one of them snarled, "There aren't enough of you around anymore."

“One of me is enough,” she said, dodging when they tried to grab onto her, slashing instinctively at their throats and their guts, even though it didn’t matter where she hit on a rhothiazein. “If you tell me which of you came up with the idea, maybe some of you might get to live.”

They didn’t like talking very much. They tried to tear her apart instead, rip her horns off, overpower her with height and numbers but she was Terezi Pyrope, the legislascerators would have fallen over themselves to admit her to the Cruellest Bar, nothing these aliens could do to her would stop her now. These ones were younger, they bled faster, they went into that collapsed dripping unconsciousness that kept them safe while they healed faster, like _trees_ , fallen saplings around her feet.

The oldest, the first of them, it would never bleed enough to fall like that. It was going to keep swinging at her until she broke open or she broke _it_. She darted around the limp bodies on the floor, came in hard on its side, she could tear her way inside it if she needed to, spill it everywhere, she _wanted_ to --

The wall between the main room and the kitchen gushed open and a whole other set of rhothiazein poured through.

"Are you fuckin' kidding me," Dave said.

“Deal with it!” she sang, sinking knuckle-deep into the back of an alien who dared to try to knock her glasses off her face.

“Yeah, I’ll filthy assistant for you, you're Starsky, I'm Hutch, let's good cop bad cop this mess, I'm game – ”

“Is that human for _cut up the uncooperative witnesses until the rest talk_?”

He was fast with the sword, almost as fast as she was. "You don't have to sound so happy about it, shit," he grunted, dragging his blade out of an unconscious, dripping rhothi body.

She hadn't been this happy in _years_.

By the time he'd carved a path to meet her in the center of the fray, she'd twisted the oldest rhothiazein’s neck all the way around, torn it halfway off its shoulders. The alien dropped in a limp heap on the floor at her feet. It wasn’t breathing.

"Let's do that again," she said. It was almost like they were back in the Land of Heat and Clockwork, Knight of Time and Seer of Mind surrounded by all the grist a pile of dead imps could get them. She could smell Dave’s blood, blazing red and thrumming under his skin. And he was bleeding -- on his face, where the color was ruined, but also in his mouth.

Dave looked from the corpse at her feet up to her face, flickeringly fast. "Hey, snap the fuck out of it, TZ," he said, and he was out of arm's reach, so she couldn't grab him, pry his lips open, and lick the blood inside before it hit the light and turned murky.

"Out of what?" Two steps, though, and she'd be able to. But Terezi didn't smell any fear on him; he wasn't prey. He was something much, much better. "Is there something wrong? Do we have a problem?"

"No," he said, "no problem." Steady breathing. She heard when he shifted his teeth, smelled when that tiny motion sent a fresh trickle of blood under his tongue, and it would've been the easiest thing in the world to press herself against him and make him remember why he should be afraid.

"Ah, ah, we need to pursue this line of inquiry, Mr Strider. Perhaps we can start with the truth?" She picked up one of the clubs to lean on, in lieu of her staff of office. "I think that's a wonderful idea."

Dave walked right up to her, took her face between his hands, and whispered something in her ear that made her aware of the way her blood was rushing in her head.

  


"Oh, man," he said, letting her go. "The shoosh thing really does work."

"Dave. Dave." She shook her head hard and slapped his chest, coy as she could manage five seconds after wanting to sharpen her claws on him. Break his skull. Flay the skin from his bones. "Are you declaring your pale intentions for me? Is this what this is? Are you waxing white like the seafoam?"

"What?"

"Kanaya told you to do that, didn't she. If I got too bad."

"Yeah."

"Well, it's a moirail thing."

"Sure, okay, layin' my beating heart on the line here." He'd swallowed the blood. It didn't matter so much now, anyway. "Pale feelings. Beyond the pale. Beyond the pail, even."

"Disgusting," she said. One of the rhothiazein they’d knocked out stirred, trying to release a chemical call for help, but she smelled it in time and kicked it, just hard enough to distract. She needed it awake to answer her questions.

____________________________________________________________

It wasn't really that Dave liked watching her work.

He had a healthy respect for what Terezi Pyrope was capable of. A girl doesn't get you killed once without you learning all her most dangerous dance moves by heart. His interest in her method was entirely professional. Entirely concerned with self preservation. Entirely preoccupied with how gracefully her arm went from a delicately dipped line to 45 degrees as she yanked the still-breathing rhothiazein into a sitting position and nudged the club under its chin.

Yeah okay. Maybe he did like watching her work. Who could blame him? There was something almost comical about the sight of a pinprick sized girl with her needle waist and her tipped up nose and her dainty chin shoving the hulking rhothiazein against a chair with her foot. It was shaking now as she loomed, her grin twitching with manic energy despite the placid calm inherent in her posture. There was a bead of translucent blood pooling beneath its eye where crisp, grey skin had cracked open like a fresh aloe vera leaf and Terezi scooped it onto her thumb, sniffing it cautiously before sampling it with a single, languid lick.

"Fresh," she commented airily, "A distant hint of mint, otherwise you rhothiazein taste like nothing at all."

The alien let out a low, rattling hiss.

"Calm down, dude." Dave commented absently. He'd taken vigil at the bar counter, elbows braced behind him and sword relaxed against one leg, "It's not an insult. It means she won't eat you when she's done with you."

"Dave, if you would keep the smartass commentary to a minimum it would be greatly appreciated."

"Who's being a smartass? They way this day is going it seemed like the logical conclusion."

"Don't sass me, Strider. This is not the time for your inept attempts at injecting Earth levity to the situation. I need it rattling in fear." And, unceremoniously, she swung the club into the side of the rhothiazein's face. Its head jerked violently to one side as its cheek caved in, skin cracking in ripples like a broken mirror. Dave had seen Greys recover from worse. Rhothiazein had a basic bone structure, but they were built like bipedal watermelons otherwise.

He shut up and let her do her thing. She went silent and grabbed the alien's chin between thumb and index finger, turning its face towards hers so that she could poke and pick at the wound, jabbing the cracks with her pointed nails until she found one big enough to wiggle her whole pinky into. With a soft sigh of triumph, she began to slowly and methodically peel the piece of skin away like a damn sticker coming off the wax paper, revealing the gooey web of off-green veins underneath.

"Damn," Dave whistled under his breath.

"What do you want?!" the rhothiazein pleaded, its voice gone high pitched and whispery with pain.

"Culling," Terezi said flatly. "Where did the idea come from."

"Are you simple?" the alien shot back shakily, "We got the idea from you. From Alternia."

Terezi's rictus grin did not flinch as she plunged her finger right into the open wound and twisted. "Don't be obtuse," she chirped when the rhothiazein stopped howling, "I wasn't looking for a philosophical conversation. Where did this idea originate among the rhothiazein?"

The alien fell quiet again. Terezi peeled another thick chunk of skin out of its ruined cheek, but this time the Grey managed to swallow the pain.

"Hmph," was all Terezi said in response. Then she dug into one of her pockets and produced her prized stick of red chalk. It was practically luminescent in the grey light, a vicious ketchup shade that left bloody dust in the grooves of her skin. The rhothiazein began to tremble again.

  


“It’s toxic to rhothiazein, isn’t it?” she asked gently, "Most Alternian chemicals were, especially those made with troll blood. Even when – " and she began to trace the puzzle-shaped cracks with agonizing deliberateness, " – applied topically."

  


The effect was almost instantaneous. The edges where the skin was raw bloody began to blacken and crinkle like dead leaves swept into a fire. The rhothiazein squirmed, but Terezi planted her foot squarely in its chest, forcing it still. Her chin was tipped at an awkward angle, like she was trying to hold her nose above an unpleasant scent. One hand held the chalk and the other cupped the curve of her hipbone, fingers rapping nervously over the fabric of her pants.

"Terezi." Low, half warning, half a question.

"Dave, shhh. It will talk." The chalk scraped over the exposed flesh, peppering burst veins with bright dust that turned its blood dark. The Defendant's mouth fell open in a helpless pant, foam bubbling over its bottom lip.

"S-South Tower," it managed weakly, the fight entirely drained from its broad chest, its long arms, its formerly arrogant countenance. "In the S-South Tower. They want t-to see you." Brought low by a tiny, cackling girl with shaking wrists and blood on her tongue. Dave felt his hands clench into unconscious fists as he struggled with a churning and sudden fondness at the pit of his stomach like he'd been punched too hard, like he was falling two hundred feet, like he was correctly repulsed with the relative ease of her violence and no part of him did an awkward little leap and jig when she turned to look at him with blazing satisfaction, especially not his dick and especially not his heart.

"I told you so," she laughed thinly and kicked off the rhothiazein's chest, leaving it to scrabble at the sizzling wound unfettered.

Yup. It was official. This planet was killing both of them in degrees. Like huge degrees. Like a whole fucking half-moon protractor of degrees.

"I don't even give a fuck. Let's blow this joint already."

"As in blow up? Fun! Somehow I don't think Karkat would appreciate that!"

"No, see, I'm using ass-old antiquated Earth phrases to make it sound like– you know what, never mind. Let's just get out of here. It's starting to stink." it was too. Injured rhothazein got sour real fast, a weird tangy smell that wasn't actually repulsive. A little like artificial fruit flavoring in candy tarts or gushers. The fact that it was oddly appealing was the part that turned his stomach.

Terezi's smile finally faded. She cleaned the tip of her chalk – gingerly and with reverence (" _I have to save the red, Dave. I'm saving it for last_.") – and slipped it into her back pocket before hopping over her gurgling victim almost cheerfully. Dave followed after her dutifully, because that was how it went – she pointed and he leapt. Of all the things Terezi Pyrope had taught him about himself, this was the most important lesson: that he was a follower, not a leader, not even a badass loner who walked the razor's edge because he was just that hardcore. It was a bitch of a lesson, but there it was. She'd only ever asked him for advice once.

Dave stopped mid-stride. The street was quiet now, thanks to the riot they’d made inside the bar.

"Hey, you okay?"

She responded testily, not even looking at him. “Dave, why would I not be okay?”

“Sorry, I forgot shaky handed torture sessions are like a trip to the spa for troll chicks. Heard that rhothiazein blood makes a great moisturizer.”

Terezi began walking again. He had to grab her by the elbow and yank her back to make her face him.

  


“Come on. I can tell you didn’t enjoy that.”

“And now the Knight thinks he is a Seer! Brilliant!”

"Terezi, this..." He paused and tried to think of a way to phrase what he was about to say without sounding like a complete moron. "This isn't you. It's not who you are," he finished lamely, mission failed. Her eyes were still bright even under the colour-draining rhothi sun, but the flush of her teal blood was muted under her skin. She looked brittle like this; her skin was thin and whatever nervous, violent energy leapt and crackled beneath it, close to the surface. He could practically see it lining her neck and arms like veins. Not that he would ever admit it - Terezi would never forgive him for describing her as anything that could be even a distant synonym for "fragile".

She laughed, "Dave, don't be ridiculous. I'm a highblood -- the _last_ highblood. Of course this is who I am!"

"Funny. I seem to remember this cold hearted murderer baring her heart to me, all, 'oh no coolkid help me how is murder formed.'"

"Emotional blackmail, coolkid. This is beneath you." she jerked her arm out of his grip and rubbed at where his fingers had been, "Why does it matter?"

"Because I'm worried, fuck you -"

"That what?" She fluttered her eyelashes up at him."That I'll lose control? That I'll go out of my mind? That I'll go _grimdark_?"

Ouch. Dave took a half step back like she'd physically socked him. A brief rage flickered through his limbs, rippled across his mouth and tingled through his twitching fingertips, but it was gone as quickly as it'd come. He evened out his facial expression with a soft exhale and ran a hand through his bangs, "Touche. Good one, TZ."

"Naturally" -- and she whirled away from him once again -- "remember: I am simply the best there is."


	9. YEARS IN THE PAST (but not that many)

Your name is DAVE STRIDER.

You cannot do this.

You can't. Not with Jade and her stupid bright green eyes staring up the four of you. Her gaze lights on each of you in turn. Measure twice, cut once. Then she takes off her glasses with a deep breath, folds them, and sets them down on the floor next to her quest bed, scientist neat. And, hey, somebody's got to break the silence. 

so whered Terezi go

didn't you hear her say she had to do something?  
something with aradia, i think...  
anyway, it's probably really important and we shouldn’t worry too much!

yeah  
ok  
cool

ARE WE DOING THIS, OR ARE WE DOING THIS.  
STRIDER, IF YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT "MAKING" "IT" "HAPEN," I'M GOING TO SCREAM.

oh yeah it took five of us to get back here and weve got twenty minutes before that batfuck dog realizes were back in the medium and or we get snapped back to the furthest ring and im going to waste time spouting memes guaranteed to wind you up because i have no sense of the moment i e were about to kill jade  
no big deal  
and did you have to say that in "air" "quotes" was that really necessary

guys!!!

If We Can All Stop Our Ridiculous Posturing For A Moment  
I Believe We Have Matters To Attend To  
Namely

 

Jade's got her knees pulled up to her chest, and she looks smaller than she ever did when you were hunting frogs on this world. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, and she presses the heels of her palms into her eye sockets before thrusting her hands down at her sides and sitting up straight and proud.

 

kanaya?

Yes Jade

will you do it?  
were both space! i think it would be appropriate :)

I Find That I Must Decline

thats okay!  
karkat.......?

LOOK, I WOULD  
I WANT TO GET OUT OF THIS GAME AS BAD AS ANY OF US DO  
BUT I HAVE FUCKED UP ENOUGH  
I'VE WATCHED ENOUGH PEOPLE DIE OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, JADE.  
I HAD TO PUT ONE OF THEM DOWN WITH MY OWN HANDS.  
DON'T ASK US TO DO THIS.

Yes That Was My Rationale  
Im Very Sorry Jade

 

And, yeah, their yellow eyes are hollow and stricken, once you get past Karkat's incessant tooth-grinding and Kanaya's poised calm. Jade looks to you and John, and you're about to open your mouth and offer yourself up when he speaks over you.

 

i'll do it, guys.

what the fuck

no, really, i have to do this!  
it's okay.

 

And Jade nods. Done deal. You're kinda relieved, in that sick core of you that you wouldn't admit to anyone but Rose and only then after she's worked you over for an hour and a half and showed off a few of the skeletons in her walk-in closet of batfuck mommy issues.

\--but all John has is his ridiculous hammer, the windy thing, and a completely unbelievable and unfair amount of luck, none which are going to kill Jade nice and quick. You're not going to sit here and watch her get her brains bashed out--you know you watched her die in another timeline; you can't stomach the thought of doing it in this one, all four of you are gonna get out of this alive--or if anyone dies, it's not going to be one of them, no matter what Rose's stupid plans are--and you're about to open your mouth and say something when John sidles up next to you all quick and pulls your sword from its sheath at your waist.

Karkat steps toward you, ready to stop you from interfering. Over his head, you see Kanaya and Jade staring into each other's eyes. There's an understanding, there: about what, you have no idea, but Kanaya nods and takes a step back.

 

oh man, i've never used one of these before!  
which end goes in again? ha ha.

god that is not even remotely funny egbert

FOR FUCK'S SAKE, JUST DO IT.

 

He's not listening to either of you anymore. He sits down on the side of Jade's bed and takes her hand, and you realize that this is the first time you've seen them next to each other: not perfect mirror images, not as close as you and Rose. Still close. Way too close.

 

it only hurts for a second, okay, jade? and then you'll be fine! i promise you.  
we will be here the whole time.

and i trust you, john!!!!  
and all of you, too!  
there were some times i thought id die alone, but now i have all of my friends with me!  
so thank you all :D

 

But John's hands are shaking so hard it takes two tries to kill her. You make yourself watch. It's the least you can do for her.

When he pulls the sword out of her body, it keeps going, and comes out whole.


	10. > John: Explain Heroic Tome of Earth Lore

They were stopped outside Karkat's office by something under a pile of squirming, writhing rhothi children calling, "Whoa, hey! Dave! Terezi!"

A shock of black hair over a sun-darkened face emerged from within the mound of tiny grey aliens. John Egbert's overbite was still an orthodontist's nightmare. He waved them over, and in the same motion, he grabbed a spindly wriggler – toddler – hand and lifted the kid trying to climb up his pant leg to sit on his shoulders, instead. The youngest ones were pure white, with coal-black eyes that faded as they aged, and they were actually pretty okay to look at. Something his eyes understood.

"I'll go on ahead," Terezi muttered, ducking into the building before any of the children could start doing that weird chemical leaking thing rhothiazein did when terrified. Dave made a great show of sighing long-sufferingly as he approached his Bro-pal, his Dude-friend, his accredited Friendleader John Egbert.

"Dave, sit down. I just got to the best part."

Dave frowned for the benefit of the white eyes staring up at him, then surrendered to John's Highly Authoritative Friendly Request and sat down in the circle of grey children at Dave's feet. One of them craned its long neck up to stare at him in silent bewilderment; another one clambered onto his lap.

When John switched back to his still-clumsy Alternian, the rhothi kids settled down, leaning forward on their arms, enraptured. “So after the great hero Nicolas Cage returned the Declaration of Independence to the Government, he – in his infinite generosity – would only accept a 1% finders fee! And then he got the girl." The children gasped, and Dave rolled his eyes when the one on his lap insisted on touching his face with all thirteen fingers. It was as light as a feather when he lifted it off of him, and then it scrambled up to wait in the line to touch its fingers to John's, as a goodbye.

He watched the kids bound off in a cloud of white sand and weird chirping noises, turned back to John. “The National Taste in Movies Board called, they say you suck.”

A pause. They both nodded contentedly. It had been securely established now that this was a man’s conversation, for men, and that no-one would be bringing up emotions any time soon.

“So how’s Terezi?”

 _Fuck._

“I mean, uh, how’s this job you’re on? With her? Karkat wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“Some bunch of rhothiazein punks are throwing their weight around. Vantas called us in to lock it down before things get any worse.”

John nodded understandingly. “Is it dangerous?”

There it was. Pulsating with dark magnificence. The Egbert Singularity. The moment in any conversation at which John said something so _impossibly retarded_ , so _completely wide of anything the point even visited on its holidays as a child_ , that a sane man could do nothing but stop and stare in reverent awe.

“Yeah,” Dave said finally. “It’s kinda dangerous.”

“Well, be careful, okay? Don’t let Terezi drag you in too far. You know how she gets.”

 _Yeah, John. I know how she gets._

"Anyway," John said, standing up and wiping the rhothiazein dust off his palms. Baby dust. It didn't stick, like the grown-up stuff did, but it was a bitch to get out of the clothes. Dave stood up too. "I feel like I should be telling them the Torah? Or fairy tales, or the _Odyssey? The Great Gatsby_? Something important."

"Doesn't matter," Dave said, watching a crowd of rhothiazein pass by.

John looked up at him – _up_ , John had stopped growing years ago – with a look like a big sad kicked puppy in a box on the side of the road in the rain. Christ. Dave hated that look. "It matters," he said. "Don't say it doesn't." But he could never frown for more than ten seconds, Dave was going to have to time him one of these days, and his face split in a grin. "They're gonna pass on _Con Air_ and _National Treasure_ , and – and _The Breakfast Club_ and _Casablanca_ into their stories, and they won't get forgotten! Isn't that nice?"

"Yeah, sure, play it again, Sam."

"They never actually said that, you know." John scratched his arm idly. "Have you seen Jade lately?"

The building across the thoroughfare groaned and ballooned out ten feet, at least, and Dave kept his mouth shut until it finished re-forming itself to accommodate whatever was inside. "Went and saw her right before I came into the city."

" – how is she?"

"Good," Dave said. "Busy, good. How’s your stuff going? Your Young Indiana Jones shit with Aradia? Triggered any boulder traps yet?”

“Oh man, it’s so cool, you have no idea. We’re finding all this incredible stuff! We’re getting really good at the glyphs now. Did you know that, before the Occupation, rhothiazein culture was a gerontocracy?”

Dave bit his lip. Of all the shit John had taken up by way of tribute – the catastrophic knitting, the interest in old languages – the long words had to be the worst. She’d always slid them in so smoothly, like you were the dumb one for not knowing what they meant. John dropped them like bricks in a pond. You could actually catch him sometimes leaning back in satisfaction to watch the ripples.

"Sorta," Dave said. He knew his protocol, at least, and there'd been that procession yesterday . "Old ones always leave and enter the room first, shit like that."

"It was like being old enough made you kind of holy, somehow.” John’s eyes were wide and blue and excited behind the frames.

“Jesus. Rule by the dude with the biggest colostomy bag. That’s pretty fuckin' weak. My lord, you just sit there and drink this cup of milky tea. I’ll send a nurse to find your slippers.”

“Not every species in every universe works like humans, Dave,” said the cool voice behind him. Too dreamy for Kanaya, not crisp enough for –

“Oh, hey, Aradia. How’s it hanging?”

She ignored the pleasantry. She did that, sometimes. “Rhothiazein are like trees; the older they get, the tougher they are."

"They venerated it," John added. "Age, I mean. Oh, and we found a sorta-kinda proto-version of..." He gestured at the building, which was bubbling and hissing, now. The rhothiazein ignored it. "Not as smart! But still aware, after two hundred years, isn't that neat?"

Dave dug uncomfortably in the dirt with the heel of one boot. “Yeah, I guess.” He could never explain, to John, to anyone, why Aradia still made him nervous. No one else seemed to have the same problem. It was something about her eyes. They always looked so goddamn far away, or else like they were looking right into the middle of you, or _both_ at the same time.

She crossed to stand by John, put a hand easily on his shoulder. Dave forced himself not to glance, not to ask. It was their business. He didn’t give a fuck. Besides, they were gods. The pair of them: actual, legitimate gods, dressed up like Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in _The Mummy_ , sure, but gods all the same. And what the fuck was he? An asshole with a sword. He could print out business cards, make it legit.

“You guys heading in?” he said, desperate to push through the moment and keep going.

John led the way. Inside the foyer, he went up and whispered something in this city's dialect, and the ramp, still glistening with Terezi's spit and dented from her claws, turned itself into a staircase.

"The fuck," said Dave, "why didn't I think of that."

John patted the railing the building had sprouted. "You didn't need it? All you had to do was ask nice, Dave."

"I just thought that stuff did it on its own." He tested the stairs with the tip of his – spongy. Like everything in this world. But still doable. Maybe the building had refused because he was with Terezi, maybe the very ground hated her guts, too. "Huh."

By the time they got up, Kanaya was bandaging up Terezi's wounds, probably too tight to be comfortable, if he knew Kanaya. Karkat snarled up from the comm table in greeting (mostly at John, who never failed to light up and grin right back) and went back to whoever he was talking to.

"So we got it done," Dave said.

"Terezi told me." Kanaya glanced out the window, which enlarged itself so they could all see out, underscoring how fucking big this place was, how absurdly _tiny_ the six of them were in it. "South Tower."

The South Tower was the tallest place in the city, at least a hundred feet, made of rhothi materials but of Alternian design, and it gave Dave the cold wrigglies in his wriggly parts whenever he looked at it. For whatever reason. He bet it was worse for the rhothiazein, but it had never been knocked down.

"It won't let itself get knocked down, is the problem," Karkat said, glancing at Dave. "You had that look on your face, fuckass. 'Why won't they get rid of it?’ You think they wouldn't if they could?"

"Karkat," John said, at the same time Kanaya did, and Terezi kept staring even when the rest of them turned away. Dave didn't say anything, and no one else did, either. "So there's people doing cullings?"

"Rhothiazein," Dave said, "yeah. Oh, get this," he added, and he could feel Terezi stiffen up behind him. "They got the idea from you guys. Your species. Ain't that rich."

If Kanaya could have gotten any whiter, she would have, Dave bet; and Karkat's scowl deepened, and he sat down at the comm table again, swivelling back to say goodbye to the person on the other end. "That was Jade," he said to Kanaya, purposefully not looking at John. "She needs three days to get here, but she'll be on time, you're gonna be fine."

Dave chanced a look at John, who was busy chewing his lower lip with those ridiculous teeth of his. So it was a miracle that he got the words out when he said, "She looks good? You had picture? On the comm, Karkat? She's healthy?"

"For fuck's sake," _just do it_ , "Egbert, John, just talk to her."

But it was Kanaya who crossed her arms and shifted her posture, just enough, so that even Dave knew she was saying _You are staying right here, young man_ , no arguments. The two of them ushered him into their kitchen area, leaving Dave and Terezi alone in the vast living space. Aradia had already drifted away somewhere.

"You're wondering," Terezi said, once the quiet stretched too long, "why is this crazy blind alien girl staring out at the tower? She cannot see it, this is absurd."

"That's not it." He stood next to her. Not too close. Didn't look at her, kept his breathing even, nothing weird.

"John helped me, you know," she said. "With – what's her name, oh, I've forgotten – "

" _Rose_."

If she was trying to dig at him again, it was a hollow, weak kind of dig, half a shovelful tossed over her shoulder at him, and she went on, "You haven't said it in so long, Dave."

"That so."

She clasped her hands behind her back and leaned forward. That spine. Unholy flexible. He bet she could bend like a pretzel, and a hot flash worked its way up the back of his neck to turn his ears bright red at the thought of it, at how disgusting it was, to think of that when she was about to tell him something about –

"All he had to do," she said, "was convince Jade that she had to make god tier. A little thing, to keep all of you safe." She waggled her eyebrows at him, but he barely noticed, he was back on the top of that mountain in front of a green bed, watching John hold Jade's hand, Jade's bright brave smile, Karkat’s and Kanaya's stricken faces.

"Nice to know," Dave said. "Thanks for telling me, I guess."

Terezi closed the distance between them and slapped his chest with the flats of both of her hands, and she must've been holding back, because his ribcage didn't cave in. His lucky day.

"We are about to go kill quite a few rhothiazein," she said, "or incapacitate them severely! For a cause we don't care about, or even believe in. I need you in your right mind."

"That an apology?" His voice wasn't cracking, that wasn't a lump in his throat, he grabbed her hands on him and held them away, in the space between the two of them, squeezing them hard as he could. Here claws were out, but not even enough to draw blood. "Well, fuck me with a spoon, TZ," he tried, and he would've drawn that out. He would've drawn it out like pretty delicious word taffy behind finger-smudged glass on the midway. But instead, he let her pull herself out of his grip -- like he could've held onto her if she didn't want to stay -- and give him his hands back.

 _Careful_. Patronizing. She knew all about mind; she'd broken him, and now she was fixing him. Making him grateful to her.

"That was not an apology, coolkid," Terezi said, just as John laughed at something Karkat said over in the kitchenspace. "Dave. You are ridiculous."

"Your sopor-sucking lusus is ridiculous," Dave said, and didn't stay around to see the look on her face.

 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

He went off to find a bathroom-equivalent, which was the usual fucking Choose Your Own Adventure in these buildings and took nearly fifteen minutes. When he got back Terezi was waiting in the corridor. He nodded at her and they made their way back down to the street in silence, Terezi occasionally prodding the staircase gingerly with her toe, as if suspicious it would conveniently decide to be a ramp again halfway down. He suspected this was actually quite likely.

It was actually a relief to be back with just Terezi, the two of them, by themselves. Like climbing back under an old duvet full of broken glass. Dave tried not to let this worry him. He walked close to her and breathed in surreptitiously. One day, he was determined, he was going to come out with a bizarre non sequitur about the way she smelt. They’d be strolling along and all of a sudden he’d bust out with _hey tz you smell like laundry detergent on linoleum_ , or _tequila in a boot_ , or something equally retarded yet insightful. Just to see her face. Trouble was, he could never think what she did smell like, except, well, Terezi. He sometimes smelt other things and thought of her, but it didn’t seem to work in reverse. The closest he’d got so far had been fresh coffee and shoe polish, but neither of those was anywhere near right, and besides he hardly remembered what they’d smelt like in the first place.

“You get anything else useful out of Vantas about this Tower?”

“Not much,” she said. She sounded tired, looked a little pale. He twigged, grabbed her arm and pushed the sleeve up. A neat white bandage on her slim grey wrist.

He blew out a breath; tried to hold the anger. “ _Jesus_ , TZ. Can you say bad timing?”

She jerked the arm away irritably and kept walking. “It’s none of your business.”

On second thoughts, fuck that.

“God _damn_ it!” he exploded, even louder than he’d meant. His voice echoed weird and flat off the slick walls on either side of the street. A couple of browsing rhothi looked up in alarm. She spun like she was on strings. “Are you fucking trying to get yourself killed?”

“Dave, you’re not – ”

“No, no, fuck you, I insist. This is insane. You know she always takes more from you ‘cause you’re so fucking rich and delicious or whatever. Higher the blood, better the kick, right? Yum yum. Good job you’re so robust and healthy, guess you can spare a pint or two. Oh no, wait, you look like a fucking corpse.”

“Anything for you, Dave,” she spat. “How else am I meant to compete?”

The air went terribly still. For the first time in his life, he saw her realise she’d pushed it too far. Her eyes widened slightly behind the shades and her mouth twitched, but any part of him that might once have appreciated the sight was lost somewhere deep in black waters.

She was off-balance. One strike. Her guard was a piece of shit at the best of times, nothing to Bro’s; he could rip through it like cotton,

lock thumb and finger round the soft bit of her throat before she could get a fucking hand past her waist –

No. _No_.

“One more crack like that,” he said, in a voice that felt like it wanted to tear clean out through his chest, “and I swear to God you will never see me again.”

He breathed slowly, let it hang. They faced each other in the street.

“Dave – ”

“No, let’s get this straight. I need you for this. These guys aren’t going to scare easy, and putting a real live highblood front and centre is the best chance we’ve got. I know I’m a puny hu-man; can’t punch my hand through a dude’s ribcage, any of that stuff. I know I’m not a fucking Legislacerator and my moral code or whatever is probably as defective as fuck. I know I was a shitty Knight, and I know I’m an even shittier merc. But I am going to do this job, this one fucking job in all my hilarious life, _right_. So I would very much appreciate you not _assfucking the mission_ any more than strictly necessary by giving your fucking _blood_ away like it’s lemonade on a hot day. If I’m going to get turned into confetti in there, I want to do it because _I_ fucked up, not because you had a fainting fit and swooned onto the fucking divan.”

“I understand,” she said simply. “I won’t break. You should worry about yourself.”

“I _am_ worrying about myself. That’s the point. If you go all Elizabeth Barrett Browning on me in there – no, forget it, doesn’t matter – I’ll _die_. And I don’t want to die.”

And at that, she finally smiled.

“Well then,” she said, “we’re making progress.”

She pivoted and carried on up the street as though nothing had happened, leaving Dave wondering exactly how she’d turned it round on him that fast.

 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

The South Tower was not so much a sore thumb among the city’s architecture as a vast extended middle finger. It went _up_ where everything else went _out_. It had all the weird lurching angularity of Alternian design in the pictures Kanaya had shown him, the trick of stacking bits on top of each other and then scaring them into not falling down, but it was made of the same dismal creamy grey glop that had been squirted out of a nozzle to make the rest of this fucking awful burg. As a piece of harmonious and aesthetically satisfying urban design, it was a prolonged farting noise. As a symbol, it worked just great. _Look, pathetic plant-creatures. This is what your beloved wallstuff can do if we get_ nasty _with it._

It was really goddamn big, too. And it didn’t seem to have any windows.

They found an orifice at ground level and stood gazing at it.

“What’s the plan?” he said. “We go in hard?”

She grinned. “Of course we go in hard. We want them to take us seriously, don’t we?”

“Okay, stupid question. Lead the way.”

The wall squelched back without protest to let them past, which was good, because Dave didn’t have the first fucking idea how one went about breaking down a door made of semi-sentient tofu. Inside the weird entrance womb two big rhothiazein with clubs managed a step forwards each before Terezi shoved her hand into the first one’s abdomen like she was rummaging for change down the back of the sofa cushions, and Dave, who wasn’t feeling flashy, cut the second one in half at waist level.

A third uncoiled at the bottom of the stairs up. Dave kicked it hard in the chest, hard enough to slam it back into the wall, arms flung out; it hung for maybe half a second before he got the sword up and pinned it there like the Crucifixion.

The building was not as heavily guarded as he’d feared. At every landing a few more rhothiazein came loping forward with their weird bouncing strides, but there was no co-ordinated assault, just isolated flurries of violence which ended as quickly as they began. He’d assumed, after the scene they’d made at the Salty Lass, that the whole place would be on Defcon Five. Maybe the news hadn’t got here yet? It’d make life easier, certainly.

Finally, in one corridor, they got a real fight. Eight or nine rhothiazein, tougher and smarter than the guys downstairs. Dave stayed methodical, forced himself not to watch her, just got on with the job. The clubs were a pain; trying for a solid block would have shattered both his arms at the elbow. He had to stick to quick hanging parries, sending strikes skittering off to the side and down, and rely on the weight to do most of the work for him. He clipped off a leg, half-turned, punched the blade through a looming face, dragged it out and into a messy sweeping cut that should have caught air but by some happy chance sent a fistful of guts splashing across one wall like a water balloon. Rhothiazein howled and mooed. A quick glimpse of Terezi, thumbs buried in an opponent’s eyes as it flapped and rolled helplessly on the ground, mewling like a cat. One beautiful arc that even Bro would have given a grudging nod, clean through a neck like it was so much jello and on to bury its gleam in a slab of grey muscle that its owner clearly needed for something vital, judging by the noise it made.

When it was over Terezi scraped a lump of what looked like Vaseline off her shoulder and gave him one of her real old grins, crazy sweaty postcoital delight that made his stomach twitch in response. She was panting happily and her hair was smeared across one cheek and her tongue flickered at the air, and he tried very hard not to think about tugging her down onto the floor on top of him and pushing his hands up under her shirt. Some kind of white fluid had spattered across her face; she wiped it off with the back of her knuckles and then licked it experimentally, which was a visual he could have managed without at that precise moment. Then she jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the translucent square of wall.

“Time for our appointment,” she said.

 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

The room inside was big and damp and, surprisingly enough, grey. It was circular, ish, if you assumed the architect had never actually seen a circle and was just going on someone else’s description that he’d read in a book. The exterior wall was not exactly transparent, but Dave could see the outlines of buildings foggy behind it. The ceiling was cavernously high, a smooth irregular dome like being inside a huge grey egg.

The rhothiazein standing in wait for them was more worthy of attention.

A gerontocracy, was that what John had said? _Like being old enough made you kind of holy_. Well, this one was _old_. Its posture was weirdly stooped and hunched, but even so it stood fully three feet taller than Dave. Its skin was a darker grey than any rhothiazein they’d seen so far, and the scaly, bony extrusions along the limbs and around the joints looked harder, spikier. Pale, jagged scars ran here and there across the leather of its hide. Its eyes were globes of milky white.

“Well, well,” it said, in Alternian, in a voice like gravel in a tumble-dryer; all at once harsh and whispery and rattling and resonant. “I never thought I would stand before a highblood. Not after the last time.”

 _The last time?_

 _Oh, fuck._

Lights came on, much too late. One gang, in the whole city, who weren’t scared shitless about the fact the oppressor walked amongst them once again. One gang who didn’t just roll over and play dead when a highblood licked her lips a block away. Should maybe have thought about that a little, Strider. Should maybe have asked some questions. You just assumed they had more guys and more money than the others, and that made them top dog.

No. It was this guy who made them top dog. This guy, who _remembered the fucking Alternian Empire_.

Terezi had got there too, but she didn’t let it show, bless her, just leered at the elder in a way that made Dave’s balls shrivel slightly. “You remember us. I’m flattered.”

“Why have you come here, little highblood? Have you come to make me your slave again?”

“You know why I’ve come here.”

“Ah yes,” the big grey said thoughtfully. “Justice. True, Alternian justice. Am I correct? The heart in you revolts at what I and my men have done. Families torn to pieces, children killed. You have come to punish us. To bring us the law.”

She said nothing. Dave watched her face carefully, or as carefully as he could while keeping an eye on the various armed youngsters milling sullenly around the edges of the room, all of whom looked they might try and do something to impress their boss at any second. Was that one carrying a battleaxe? Fuck.

“And yet, in the hundreds on hundreds of sweeps your people walked among us like gods – villages burnt or put to the knife at a whim, babies speared and carried off for banquets, young ones lashed to death in the streets for walking too fast, or too slowly – the law never once took an interest. Can you explain this to me, little highblood? It has puzzled me for so very long. Is it wrong to kill a child and leave its body at the sire’s door? Or is it only wrong if you are not a troll?”

More pieces tumbled down into place. Dave cursed under his breath.

“That’s why you did it.”

They both turned to look at him. Terezi shot him the usual _stay out of this coolkid_ glare, but the elder looked encouraging, almost friendly. “Yes? Go on.”

Dave swallowed. “All this – this culling, or whatever you call it. You weren’t scaring off the local gangs. You were laying bait. Weren’t you?”

The elder’s tongue flopped out and it touched its hands together lightly. “Once I learned there was a highblood on my planet, I could not resist! There was just so much I wanted to ask her. So many questions left unanswered. So I sent her an invitation.”

“Nice,” said Dave. “Killings, Alternia-style. The one thing she’d have to come and check out for herself.”

“Precisely. I had not expected the other troll – what’s his name, the lowblood, Vantas – to take an interest. I had not counted on his civic spirit. You know, I have truly begun to believe he has our people’s interests at heart? Remarkable. It will not save his life, of course, but still, he has surprised these old eyes. You, on the other hand – ” it turned back to Terezi – “are no surprise, little highblood. No surprise at all.”

“Stop calling me that,” she said softly. “What kind of leader are you? You’d kill your own kind just to get your hands on one troll?”

The elder made a whispery scrunched-paper noise Dave recognized as laughter.

“You are young, are you not? Yes. Ten sweeps, perhaps less. But even a highblood of ten sweeps should have learnt this lesson. There is no value in a life. Because it moves, and it drinks water, and it talks of love and hate, we clothe it in a mystery; we make it more than what it is. Life is a spasm, an accident. Life has no more value than a breath of wind. To give it worth, it must be used. Will you punish the miller for the winds that die in the shroud of his sails? Or will you take his bread, and be grateful?”

“Dude,” Dave objected. “That’s a pretty fucked-up analogy. What’s the next big project, a steam engine that runs off babies?”

“If they are cheap and plentiful, why not? Most species are in the habit of making more, if left to themselves. Ask your companion. I gather she performed an interrogation earlier today using a stick of chalk. Has she ever told you how chalk is made on Alternia? It’s admirably efficient.”

That one hit home. No-one but Dave Strider would have noticed the way the skin at the corner of Terezi’s eye crinkled for a second.

“You see, I was once like you, little highblood,” the elder went on. “Once I too believed that a life was a sacred thing, a rare flower amid the weeds of the cosmos. Your people opened my eyes. They killed my friends, my family, to build their castles and power their ships. They taught me the lesson of how little a life means. And now they are gone, and I am left to teach it back to you.”

“None of this is relevant,” said Terezi tightly. “You are a criminal. You are a murderer. And I will bring you to justice.”

“Whose justice? Alternia’s? Alternia doesn’t punish murderers. It makes them into kings.”

“Not Alternia’s,” she said. “Mine.”

An ugly rumble came from the greys grouped around the walls, who had been watching in silence for the last couple of minutes.

“Oh, no, little highblood,” said the old one, and there was a satisfied calm in its voice Dave didn’t like. “If you will not speak for Alternia, you speak for nothing at all. You have no power here. We reject your justice.”

Dave stepped closer to her, but the elder was faster. All through the interview it had kept one great meaty grey hand closed tight. Now it flung the arm out and downwards. There was a sharp crack, and a flicker of light.

“TZ, _down_ – ” Dave yelled, and then stopped, half-crouched. Nothing had happened. Neither the elder nor the others round the walls had moved. There was no sudden flame, no shockwave. Only a strong smell – a weird, sweet smell, cloying and chemical, which made Dave’s nostrils itch. Gas? It smelt more like cheap air freshener, only louder.

Terezi clutched his sleeve and her fingers bit tight like loops of barbed wire. He hissed in surprise.

“Dave – Dave – I can’t see – "

Her voice scrabbled at panic. _Jesus_. It was so simple he wanted to applaud. They’d fogged the whole room with artificial scent. Didn’t matter a damn to him, but to Terezi it was a magnesium flare. On a nice normal planet she’d have coped – lost some detail, sure, but she could have parsed out reds, blues, greens, built a basic picture. Here there was nothing to parse, no contrasts; just eight hundred different fucking shades of grey, so much grey they’d both been drowning in it. The stink-bomb had wiped out even those subtle variations. She was flying through cloud.

He gripped her shoulders tightly. “Sit it out for a sec. Try and focus. I got this.”

“Dave, no – ”

He turned. The old one was still standing, lumpy arms by its sides, waiting.

“So, hey. You’re in with a shot at the million boonbucks. Final question’s this. Is it okay to kill a bunch of kids to prove some weird-ass philosophical point? Ennt! Sorry, wrong answer. But it’s not all bad, ‘cause you do get to go home in a box. Big round of applause, folks.”

“You,” said the old one mildly, “are quite irrelevant.”

“Shit, who told you feelings were my weak point?”

“My business is with the highblood. You may leave, if you wish. But I have lived a hundred of your lives, and if you fight me, I will tear you apart."

“Well, it’s good you think so,” Dave drawled. If a childhood spent getting his ass kicked by Bro three times a week had taught him anything, it was that just because you were bound to lose, didn’t mean you had to act like it. “But back on Earth – my planet, nice place, lots of colors, you’d hate it – we have this whole saying. You never let someone else dance with the girl you brought to the party.”

 _Ah, macho posturing. Is there anything it can’t solve?_

 _And where the fuck have you been? You pick the worst times to show up._

 _I’ve been here all along. Don’t worry about me. Concentrate on the big scaly alien, dear._

The rhothiazein were herbivores, so they didn’t have claws or fangs worth a damn. What they did have were arms. Long, gangly ones with hard chitinous plates running up them, which they fucking swung. That was going to make this harder; for what Dave had in mind, claws would have worked best. On the other hand, claws would kill him faster if he fucked up. He’d seen greys use their battering arms on trees, knocking down fruit and loose branches, but he didn’t know how hard they actually –

Oh. _That_ hard.

He wheezed, blinked away spots, hauled himself back to his feet. Surely the ribs hadn’t gone already? That would be a fucking embarrassment. No, all good, just sore. Okay. Try that again.

He dodged another couple of swings, lunged for the old one’s centre of mass. Christ, it was fast. Slipped out the way like Terezi, despite being three times her size and as old as Methuselah. Dave ducked a sweep – not ready for headshots just yet, thank you – turned, and caught one on his left flank which sent him sprawling. Needles of pain stabbed and glinted all along that side as he landed. The bony thorns on the thing’s arm meant it was like getting hit by a cheese-grater. He risked touching it and the hand came away slick. Rolled up, ducked again, quick slice at the throat – _close_ , close enough to piss it off – and then –

Oh, yeah. There was the headshot. Dave curled round himself on the floor, tears leaking from closed eyes, head an exploding star. His mouth filled with blood and he bit his lips shut grimly. The side of his face felt like a mess. Up, up, come on.

He half-stood, keeping his teeth clenched, and then peeled his lips back to bare them in the best impression he could muster of the Pyrope Grin. It was the least he could do, really. Didn’t work so well with cute little stumpy white squares, what you really needed was six million death-shark daggerfangs, but at least the blood all round the gums gave it a bit more impact.

“Come on, motherfucker,” he mumbled. “Show me what you got.”

Another thirty seconds and he only took four more hits. Not bad. A rib had gone, but what could you expect? Spending time with trolls had proved that human bones were basically Grandma’s finest teacups; it was a wonder they didn’t shatter every time you ran upstairs. And he’d scored a thin line right across its chest, which he was proud of like a four-year-old with its first finger-painting. _Mommy, look what I did_! It was leaking clear fluid, slowly, and the rhothiazein wasn’t happy about it.

Get close. Ignore your instincts. Range is the enemy. If he knocks you away, get back in closer. Imagine you want to give him a big old hug.

Actually, screw it, give him a big old hug. That’ll really confuse him.

He pushed and pushed, slicing, harassing, using the blade more like a steak knife than a sword, turning it to press the whole edge into exposed flesh. Got inside the arms as they whipped and lashed. Threw himself bodily at the elder in a clumsy shoulder-charge, driving them both back. Three ribs gone, right collarbone a distant memory but the fucking thing was only there for decoration anyway, left leg hazy, ask again later. Skull holding up thus far, thank God. And, if there was one nice thing about brawling with an alien, it hadn’t even tried for a groin shot. Didn’t know he kept anything good down there, presumably.

Bleeding like a stuck pig. Spat a bit more up into the thing’s face for good measure. Come on.

Another couple of strikes and it was over. The elder bellowed with fury and picked him up bodily in both arms. As he felt himself swung up into the air over its head he made sure to throw the sword, hard, in the right direction. It shook him, once, twice, three times, and he nearly crowed in triumph.

Then it flung him down onto the spongy grey floor, which turned out not to be all that spongy. Something important went crack. Dave decided to keep still for a bit.

The elder loomed over him. “You are far too fragile to be a warrior, little one. Your skin splits like ripe fruit. But you are brave, at least.”

“Did I tell you about my friend Jade?” Dave gasped, trying not to give it away by laughing.

“The one who lives beyond the city? My men have been observing her. She is a – ” and he used a word Dave didn’t understand. “A scientist.”

“Yep. Works on bodies, mostly. Cells.” He coughed. “Spends lots of time looking at cells down a, uh – ” okay what the _fuck_ was Alternian for _microscope_ – “a make-bigger-glass.”

“Why are you telling me this? Are you trying to prove that you creatures are useful? We don’t need your help.”

God, they were slow. Rose would have been there ten minutes back. She’d have found a table out front and been halfway down her first cappuccino by now.

“Thing about cells,” he ploughed on weakly, “is they’re just bits of gunk. No color, no shape, and tiny as fuck. Hard to see, okay? So what Jade has is this bottle of stuff, dark stuff, and she kind of drips it on, and it dyes them. And then she can see them just fine.”

He thought he saw it start to understand, saw the first shudder of concern behind the milky old eyes.

“Take a look at yourself, dude. You ain’t so grey any more. All the nasty spiky bits of you are picked out in what an associate of mine would call _delicious candy red_.”

The rhothiazein took a step back, then another.

“It’s her favorite color, you know,” Dave said conversationally. “She told me once she could smell it a mile away, and I’m not sure she was joking.”

He heard the faint metal scrape somewhere behind him as she picked up the sword. The grey metal sword, lying on the grey rubbery floor, with its kind of grey-black handle. Tied with a tattered strip of bright pink ribbon.

Terezi stepped forwards and levelled the blade, and even at arm’s length it didn’t so much as wobble.

“This man,” she said quietly, in a voice that shook with something so far away from fear that he couldn’t help a smile, “this man is _mine_. You understand? Mine. And you – you aren’t worthy to wear his blood.”

She’d never called him _man_ before. Boy, and coolkid, but never man. For some reason that seemed to matter a lot.

She’d never said the rest of it, either.

Dave let his head fall back to stare up at the weird curve of the ceiling and sighed drowsily. _Showtime_.


	11. YEARS IN THE PAST (but not that many)

TentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

 

TT: Dave.   
TG: what   
TT: Dave, we need to talk. 

Your name is DAVE STRIDER and you've heard this before. 

You've got a tiny alien chick leaning really fucking close to you, eight or so bleeding wounds, and about a half hour before what's probably going to be the end of the world. Now is not the time for your ectobiological twin to regale your eyes with the dulcet lavender of pesterchum.

TG: well thats ominous  
TG: do we need to reevaluate our relationship   
TG: are we having The Talk rose  
TG: capital letters and everything goddamn   
TT: While I certainly wouldn't want to disparage your fumbling attempts at coping with the recent revelation of our biological consanguinity, no, I did have a reason for pestering you right at this moment.   
TG: ive got terezi breathing down my neck  
TG: wiggling her eyebrows  
TG: gotta wrangle this bucking bronco can we make it quick   
TT: She's right there? With you?   
TG: yep   
TT: Good.   
TG: yeah no ok shes wandering off to lick things  
TG: i knew she was weird man  
TG: look at that tongue  
TG: man   
TT: You'll have to describe it in all the salacious detail I'm sure you think it deserves.   
TG: challenge  
TG: accepted   
TT: Oh lord. You would decide to take me literally just at this moment.   
TG: fine whatever never mind  
TG: i need some time to make it rhyme i can't just spit out all these elegant rhapsodies  
TG: cant rush genius rose  
TG: so whats up 

You get dead air for a long time. Nothing but a blinking cursor and Terezi off in the middle distance trying to scrape the flavor off of the topiary with her tongue.

TT: I'm finding this surprisingly difficult.  
TT: I ought to just come right out and say it. It's not my intention to keep you in suspense.   
TG: well your doing a great job so far  
TG: im not strung out on tenterhooks at all   
TT: In approximately five minutes I am going to destroy the last obstacle between us and the end of this game.  
TT: Which means these are almost certainly the penultimate minutes of our relationship.  
TT: If that means we're having The Talk, then certainly, let's discuss.   
TG: fuck  
TG: i thought you were over that  
TG: jesus rose your a free man now didnt the gods let you out of their tentacles or whatever  
TG: shits inevitable for me not you   
TT: Inevitability has nothing to do with it. I made this choice of my own free will, however dubious that entire concept might be.  
TT: This needs to happen. Someone needs to make it happen.  
TT: That someone is going to be me.   
TG: ok weve got three minutes  
TG: i hate you right now just so you know  
TG: i hate you so much   
TT: Two and a little more than fifty seconds.  
TT:I know you wanted to be here out of some misguided sense of solidarity.  
TT: I imagine you think that you could step in and wreak havoc on the timeline and that'd fix everything.  
TT: I've imagined it a lot, actually. In the last half hour.   
TG: tell me whats stopping me though  
TG: tell me why i shouldnt just rewind the clock  
TG: and tie you to one of these yellow trees until you decide that no dave im not going to go running off on a suicide mission thats silly  
TG: dont you dare read anything into that   
TT: I'll avoid analyzing the analogous situations you've found yourself in several times before. For your sake, Dave. And for mine, I don't think I could right now.  
TT: I think this game wants us to make sacrifices.  
TT: I think it punishes us for taking the easy way out or trying to cheat.   
TG: two minutes   
TT: The last time we had this conversation I said that I wasn't very good at this Light shit.  
TT: I don't think I'm any better at it now, even if the Furthest Ring aren't waiting for me to bring this session crashing down for their thirsty pleasures.  
TT: John and Jade are going to need you.   
TG: no shit theyre going to need you what are you talking about  
TG: what did i do this whole game  
TG: get pushed around by a couple of troll chicks and make a bunch of fake money  
TG: look ok youre going to die in  
TG: fuck im not even going to waste my time typing out the amount of time  
TG: this is stupid  
TG: what i wanna know is  
TG: why me  
TG: why talk to me  
TG: why not john   
TT: John wouldn't tell me to stop.  
TT: It's narcissistic and codependent of me, I know, but I wanted someone who wouldn't just say I was doing the right thing.  
TT: Don't tell him I said that.   
TG: motherfuckin soul of discretion   
TT: Twenty seconds.   
TG: oh fuck  
TG: fuck   
TT: And don't let Terezi talk you into anything stupid.   
TG: no i wont  
TG: rose  
TG: i just wanna say 

TentacleTherapist [TT] has disconnected


	12. > STRIFE

The hilt of Dave's sword in Terezi's palm was the first bright spot in the room, fluttering lavender-pink. She centered herself around it, thought about the blade as an extension of her arms, like her body was supposed to be an extension of the law. Everything else was red, tipped red spikes on the ancient rhothiazein's shoulders, dripping red smears on its arms and the backwards angles of its knees, smeared red spray across its face, a cherry-syrup target gleaming in the fog of scent.

Red, in a heap on the floor to her right, cherries and iron and the exposed bitter snap of white bone, and if she had anything like time right now she'd like to inform Dave that his soft human organs weren't for playing with -- like he thought he was some kind of indestructible cavalreaper. She didn't have time. Dave was the one who always had enough time. What she had now was a dance.

She moved first, flew at the rhothiazein's chest with all of her weight and every ounce of speed behind the sword. It melted away from her, flowed like water and made her run to keep up. The heavy swinging of its arms made scarlet arcs in the air. When the spikes caught her the first time, she went sprawling. They came away streaked teal from her hip, teal on red, and she grinned.

On her feet again, faster now. Darting in close, close enough that the places Dave had opened the elder's flesh oozed gleaming lines of scent even in the fog. She swung the blade, batted the rhothiazein's strikes away from her, wished her claws were larger or for a real cane, a staff of office, a dragon-headed polearm she'd never get to have. The elder swept one of those arms around her back, slammed her against its chest, the flat of the sword trapped between them. It hurt, she didn't have enough breath in her lungs, and some of the clarity of the red was getting drowned in the taste her own teal blood, filling her mouth.

"You fight so hard, little highblood," the rhothiazien said. It sounded surprised, maybe even a little sad.

If she struggled, she'd cut herself worse on the spikes holding her still, or on Dave's sword. "So do you," she said. "Did you think I wouldn't?"

It drew its lips back from blunt, plant-mashing teeth. "Your empire is dead," it said, and tossed her free. She spun in the air, clinging to the lavender hilt of the sword, tumbling around a fixed point. Landing would have smashed her like Dave was if she wasn't a troll.

It took Terezi too long to gather her breath back. She expected the rhothiazein to hit her across the spine, but it didn't. It wasn't moving as fast as it had been. She'd hurt it, too, and it was taking advantage of the breathing space. Knowing that should've made her feel better than it did.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, Alternia is dead." She'd never said it before.

"All except for you, Legislascerator," it said. "It lives in you."

She staggered when she managed to get up. Her feet were leaving teal prints, showing her where she'd been. She circled the elder, slowly. A trail of glowing grey followed behind it on the ground.

"No, it doesn't." When she swung this time, she could feel the muscles in her back scream in protest where they'd been torn open. She connected anyway. The elder grunted, hissed at her, jerked itself free. They were both slowing down.

"Then you have nothing left," it told her. "No justice to enact, no punishments to deal out."

She drew herself straight. It made her a better target and that didn't matter. "You murdered your own species' children to get to me," she said, clearly. "Alternia's dead. I'm just a nightmare you remember. You're fighting a ghost, killing me won't make you wake up –"

It found some reserve, charged at her, an enormous rush of smeared color and blows she couldn't ward off. She fell on her back, next to Dave, managed to keep hold of the sword. She jerked the tip of it up, jammed it forward at an angle, watched it sink a quarter-inch into the elder's throat. It went still, staring down at her. Its breath shuddered, one inhale to each two of hers.

"Fancy seeing you down here," Dave said at her elbow.

“I hope you're having a pleasant rest, Dave.”

“Yeah, it's peachy,” he rasped, eyeing the alien over her shoulder.

She licked her lips, then spat out a globule of blood that missed its ear by a centimeter.

"Alternia's dead," the elder said, her words in its ancient voice sounding far more final than they'd been in her mouth. "But you're not, little highblood."

 _I'm not_ , Terezi thought. She nodded. Nodding made her head spin. "Neither are you."

Its milky eyes looked straight through her. "Are you going to change that?"

"No," she said. "Unless you make me." It took as much effort to let go of the hilt of the sword as it did to swing it that last time. The blade slid free of the elder's flesh, clattered next to them on the spongy floor.

The alien stood up, all seven and a half feet of it, covered in their colors. Terezi envied it, suddenly, envied that it had seen her people strong and powerful and cruel, and that she never, ever would.

"Is this your justice," it asked her.

"Mine," she said. "Yes."

It nodded, slowly. "Then take your warrior and get out of my tower."

Dave made a noise, a broken amused snickering. Human laughter sounded very painful when mixed with human fractured ribs.

"Are we finished?" Terezi made herself ask. _Are you finished with me_?

"We're finished," the elder said. It backed away, until the throng of its followers surrounded it, the humming noise of their speech a slow cacophony in her ears.

"Dave," she said, poking at him gingerly. "Dave, time to abscond."

Dave's head was pounding by the time the sentient wall spit them back out into the street. They hobbled out of the thoroughfare into an alley as quickly as they could, sinking down to the ground with the sword propped beside them. Terezi pulled off her jacket and made an improvised sling for Dave's arm out of it. The ribbon was still crumpled between his fingers. It was spattered with smears of red, grey and teal, the pink almost overwhelmed. Terezi's hands paused on her calf, where she was inspecting the damage she had sustained.

He curled it around his fingers, the blood still wet. She put her hand over his, and closed it around the ribbon.

Dave looked at her for a moment, looked at the bruises mottling her throat and the teal smudges matting her hair. He looked at the curl of her lips, and the sharp line of her collar bone, the cock of her head and the swell of her breasts against her shirt. Ribbon still fisted in his hand, he leant forward and covered her mouth with his. She returned the kiss forcefully, lacing her hands in his hair and pulling him towards her. He could feel her nails against his scalp, the drumming of her heart against his chest. Sliding her fingers along the skin of his neck, she mirrored the movement with her tongue on his lower lip. The sensation spiked straight to his groin, and he pulled her tighter against him, unthinkingly. His bad arm was caught between them, and throbbed with pain.

He pulled back, reluctantly breaking the kiss.

She was breathing heavily, eyes lidded behind her shades and lips swollen.

“Fuck, okay, no," Dave said, "let's try this again when we stop looking like war movie extras.”

She blew a strand of hair out of her face, steadying her breathing, then laughed high and clear, the crisp sound cutting through the thick, grey air.

“Shit. You’re finally losing it.”

“Shut it, coolkid,” she cackled, yanking him to his feet gracelessly. He wasn’t ready and nearly toppled over again right there but she steadied him with that strength that never stopped being surprising. He slung his arm over her shoulder almost in defeat.

"Yes, ma'am."

She grinned bloodily the whole damn way back.

 

________________________________________________________________________________

 

Karkat, on the other hand, had no smiles for their broken ribs and coagulating wounds. He sat across from them at the table rapping his fingers testily and Dave had never felt so much like a child about to be denied dinner and video games.

"So let me get this straight..." he breathed, hand slamming abruptly on the surface of the table, "You not only successfully tracked down the target..."

"Yeah, wasn't exactly hard what with the way we'd been given a precise location and everything."

Dave's favourite thing about Karkat was how easy it was to make the guy look like he was having an impromptu aneurysm. Didn't even have to get colourful or make any metaphors - the simplest of statements delivered with just enough flat-lined nonchalance and he started up with this irritated little twitch at the corner of his right eye. Terezi always cited this tendency as “adorable”, and Dave had to agree - adorable in the same way a yappy, little dog was. Fifteen percent condescendingly fond amusement, eighty five percent wondering why you haven’t drowned the thing in the bathtub yet.

“Not _only_ -” Karkat began again, “Did you use your keenest of detecting skills to track down the target - the ease of which is non-withstanding because sometimes Strider I swear you can’t find the right end of your nook at the load gaper - but you are telling me that victory was within grasp and you let it slip through your fingers as if they were sweaty and slicked with shame-glue. What possible fucking reason could you have had to -”

“It was necessary,” Terezi said shortly, licking a long line up the inside of one bloody finger, “Right, Dave?”

Dave shrugged agreeably, “Yeah.”

The twitch had blossomed into a full on vein throb and Karkat looked as if he were about to launch into a fit of shockingly eloquent swearing when a tumbler of water hit him square in the forehead.

“Don’t even start, Karkat! They’re really hurt!”

Jade had impeccable aim - not surprising considering her sniper’s eyes. Dave felt the twitch of a grin forming even as she yanked the bandage around his ribs too tight. Good Jade, Best Friend.

Karkat rubbed at the sore spot forming and deflated with a sigh. To his left, Kanaya chuckled, “Don’t worry, Jade. He’s just worried.”

“About us?” Terezi wondered coyly, “Why Karkat, I never ever.”

“Whatever,” he muttered, rolling his eyes, “Just remember that the next time you two burst in here looking like you took a leisurely swim in a meat grinder you shouldn’t expect us to just cheerfully give you fucking gold star back pats for being complete and utter fuck-ups. You get beat up like this again and I’ll finish the job myself. I’ll turn you inside out from the bottom up and not even Harley will be able to save you.”

Jade stuck her tongue out at him defiantly and Dave grunted in response, “Yeah, okay, Vantas. We get the point. Love you too.”

This time Karkat got the wordless howl of frustration out. Kanaya papped him gently, but she looked more charmed than anything. The white glow of the rhothi evening cast her skin in a richer light than usual. It was almost blinding to look at her, but she looked more alive than ever.

“Buuut,” Jade interjected, tying the last knot of fabric around Dave’s bloody waist, “He does have a point. Isn’t there going to be trouble if you two didn’t stop the cullings? Wasn't Karkat asked to stop them?” she blinked up at them from behind her bottle-thick glasses. Dave craned his head around to meet Terezi’s gaze, but as usual she wasn’t catching the meaningful look with anything except her nostrils.

“I don’t think...” Terezi said carefully, “That we have to worry about that anymore.” They hadn’t explained the whole story and Dave wasn’t certain they were going to. This all depended on how much Karkat Vantas trusted the word of Terezi Pyrope. She let the statement fall like a stone and waited three beats until Karkat’s demeanour warmed and he leant back in his chair, features soft as he nodded exactly once. _Yeah, okay_. Terezi’s smile was more sincere this time - more sincere than it had been in years. Some things never changed.

“Good enough.” and Kanaya stood, smoothing down her skirt with narrow, pale hands, “Just in time. John and Aradia are about to arrive home with the groceries.”

The accuracy of Kanaya’s preternatural senses were uncanny enough that no one had time to question her usage of the word _home_. John and Aradia did burst through the door at just that moment, chattering to each other in what sounded like ancient goddamn rhothi and arms full of colourless vegetables. Dave winced as Jade helped him back into his overshirt, but he was relaxed. More than relaxed, he was chill as fuck on account of not having the energy to be anything but contemplative as he slid into a slouch and watched Jade banter and bicker lovingly with Karkat across the table. Kanaya helped Egbert and Aradia into the kitchen and before long the whole place was bustling with noise and laughter. It had been a long time since they’d all been together like this. Fucking _years_ since Karkat had last wrangled them into the same room and that time it had ended disastrously.

Dave chanced a look in Terezi’s direction. She was being quiet for once in her life - eyes lidded heavily and body language languid. She didn’t tip her head in his direction, but she did reach out to take his hand very gently and very subtly. _Oh, why the hell not_ , Dave thought and not so subtly he raised her hand to his lips and ghost a chaste kiss across her scratched up knuckles.

If Jade and Karkat thought anything of it, they didn’t say so. No surprise - not like _Dave and Terezi have a "thing"_ hadn’t been an open secret since the first goddamn time she’d asked him about the taste of his blood. But what _kind_ of thing - ah, now there was the billion boonbuck question.

 

 

________________________________________________________________________________

 

After dinner, they gave him a room alone on the far side of the flat, cuddled all cozy and limp boned in a rhothi gelatin bed. He could still hear their voices in the main room - John and Terezi’s obnoxious laughs and Jade’s high-pitched tittering. Dave just stared at Rose’s ribbon in the half light and tried to figure out how he felt about the fact that for once, he wasn’t wondering what would be different if she’d been there, if she’d been here, if she hadn’t died. When the flat grew quiet, the door squelched open and Terezi padded in, dizzy from weak rhothiazein liquor and still dressed in her blood-stained clothes. Wordlessly, she crawled onto the bed and curled into all the space he wasn’t taking up.

“Hey, girl.”

She rest her head on his shoulder, “How's your arm?”

“Excellent. I’m thinking the extra joint really suits me.” She snorted and ran a hand up his chest in exploration, nails catching on the bandages.

“I was right, you know.” and Dave heard the echo of the battle. _But you’re not. You’re not dead_.

“Usually are,” he curled his fingers around the ribbon one last time before letting it flutter to the floor, “Guess I should get rid of this, then.”

“No! Keep it. Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting.”

“Yeah? Then what does it mean?”

She braced herself on one elbow and propped herself up to pluck the sunglasses from his face. He couldn’t have stopped her even if he’d wanted to.

“Dave, haven’t you ever wanted to just... stop?” she stared at him seriously, her bangs all matted to her forehead with blood and her eyes ringed heavy and dark with the stress of the longest fucking day they’d had yet on this planet.

“You’re gonna have to be a little more specific.”

“Don’t be stupid. You know what I mean. It takes effort to be so obstinate! It takes effort to be so _morose_! I would just... like to stop.” she paused and lowered her head again, tugging at a length of medical tape strapped just under his collarbone, “And you should too. We should try it together.”

“Shit was that like a marriage proposal? Slow down girl, you don’t even know if you can afford my dowry yet.”

“Dave, I don’t even know what that is.” He liked the way her voice sounded when tinged with irritation. That could get to be a problem.

“Let’s be serious for a minute, TZ. What the fuck are we doing? We make each other miserable.”

“Do we?” that she was waggling her eyebrows should have been a warning. She yanked the bandage off in a single, fluid movement that looked graceful as all get out and stung like a bitch. With a grin, she rolled on top of him and licked the re-opened wound like it was a delectable lollipop - agonizingly and with a look of supreme contentment.

“See,” Dave hissed, “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

Her tongue didn’t stop there. It took a left turn on clavicle avenue all the way up the four lane highway of his jugular, “I will tell you when you’re being an idiot,” she murmured, teeth brushing the line of his jaw, “That is the opposite of misery. Dave, why didn’t you tell me what an idiot I have been?”

He raised his eyebrows, “Didn’t I get a rap across the knuckles last time I tried to play Seer?”

“Well, you are terrible at it!” she eased her legs out, stretching the whole length of her compact body across him, “I suppose it would be too much to ask that level of emotional self awareness.”

He passed a hand over his eyes.

“Look, TZ, just cause you can see a problem, don't mean you can fix it.”

“Careful, Dave, that was almost an insight you just had.”

“Yeah, well, better bottle that shit up. Ain't anymore coming any time soon.” It hurt to raise his arms, but he gave it a good old college try anyway, hooking the less mangled one around her waist. “I'll get the pickling jars.”

“Yes, let's preserve these delicate feelings. We can clear a shelf in the pantry. We can get a pantry specifically for this purpose.”

“Shit. Are we having a 'feelings jam’? Emotional preserves.”

“Pickled anger is a delicacy.”

“Regret chutney.”

“Guilt conserve.”

“Yeah, I've had enough of that already, 'kay? You can leave the relish off my life sandwich today.”

“Okay. What about a tongue sandwich. Chef's special.”

He wrinkled his nose. “What like cow tongue or something? That shit's nasty. One time Bro bought a pound of it from some discount meat place and we had to eat it every - ”

She shuts him up with another kiss, slipping her tongue into his mouth. She pulled back, and jabbed one finger into his forehead.

“Nope, not hoofbeast tongue.”

Color rose to his cheeks.

“You are. The least sexy thing left in this whole fucking barren universe.”

She laughed, “Does it make you _miserable_ , Dave?”

He chewed his lip absently, chewed on his come-back, thought over the last forty-eight hours, and carefully answered: “Who knows. So I might as well give it a try.”


	13. CREDITS

**AFTERWORD**

**Hi, my name is Cephied Variable and I am the Palhoncho of Team Dave <3Terezi here to apologize for tricking you into reading a mini-novella. _Fade to Grey_ clocked in at **24,625 words** written over the course of **sixteen days** by **six and a half people** with art credits going to **Odie, Naive Wanderer** and (unfortunately) **myself**. We wrote the fic as a round robin, allotting each writer a total of two days to pass in their sections because we are terrible students and waited until the last moment to start working on the final project. That being said, writing this fic was an interesting and experimental creative whirlwind and we hope you enjoy the end result as much as we enjoyed making it, regardless of any thematic inconsistencies, unpleasant moral grey areas or damages incurred by the Egbert Singularity. We worked very hard to make this as much about "culture shock" as per the theme as we could. Check out our incredible behind the scenes process!**

_______________________________________________________________________  
\- _Culture shock. We need to keep smacking people over the head with this or they will vote us down for not filling the prompt. I suggest dialogue like_ -  
GC: D4V3 1 DO NOT UND3RST4ND TH3 CULTUR3 OF TH1S PL4N3T  
TG: i know rite  
TG: im pretty fuckin shocked  
GC: D4V3 YOU 4R3 HOT BUT 1 H4V3 1SSU3S >:[  
TG: backatcha  
TG: lets go kill these dudes in a kinda smouldering angry way  
 _You see? Simple, effective, and utterly convincing._  
 **-the right honourable paraTactician**  
_______________________________________________________________________

Participating in this competition has been occasionally stressful, often nail-biting, illuminatingly eye opening and over all artistically satisfying. Thanks go out once again to Inks and Re for pulling the whole thing together and kudos go out to our fellow teams for being an unrelentingly positive group of fans with boggling amounts of talent! Additionally, thanks go out to the HSO community for liking us enough that we placed in all three of the regular rounds! Hopefully we have not let you down this time!

Without further ado, I present: the assholes of **TEAM D4NC3 P4RTY**!

**CEPHIEDVARIABLE.** Drank a lot of gin and tonic while working on this. She is both arrogant and pretentious and tries to redeem these as virtues rather than vices. Ruled over Team D4NC3 P4RTY with an iron fist in a very fashionable paisley glove.

 

Codename **'paraTactician'** is the only survivor of the top secret Weapon Chi Project, the British government's ethically questionable attempt to splice human genetic material with Sidgwick and Morice's Greek Verse Composition and a copy of Fire Emblem for the GBA. The subject broke free from his nutrient bath of lukewarm PG Tips (milk, no sugar) and escaped the facility after a security oversight allowed him access to a sword; unfortunately all the guards happened to be axe-types. Since that terrible day he has been on the run, at a steady rate of six squares per turn, occasionally stopping to help distressed young women with their Greek unseens before vanishing once more into the night. His only known weaknesses are drink and cheesecake, and his Support Conversations remain a mystery.

 

**RE: MELINDIL**  
ALIASES: UNKNOWN  
ORIGIN: UNKNOWN  
CURRENT LOCATION: DETAILS UNKNOWN  
WEAPON OF CHOICE: SEDUCTION, SNIPER RIFLE  
WARNING! THIS WOMAN IS THOUGHT TO BE HIGHLY DANGEROUS AND LIKELY ARMED. ALSO FREAKISHLY TALL. ENGAGE AT OWN RISK.  
Target is currently thought to be posing as a social worker in her mid-twenties in the northern United States. Known to have high Charisma and regularly rolls natural 20s. Be on the watch for Speechcraft checks and avoid allowing her to roll if at all possible. Authorities recommend keeping your distance. If target must be engaged in conversation, do not go in alone! Target is extremely vulnerable to swords and pictures of baby animals; ducklings and kittens are especially potent. Keep pictures of these on hand in case of emergency.

 

**Linden** is kept locked in a small monastic cell a dreadfully far mile or so from the City, where she is fed on inappropriate slash pairings and the ground-up participles of dead languages. Every so often she shoves hastily-scribbled missives about legitimate authority and ridiculous AUs through the grating in the door. She does not have a hat shaped like Constantinople, despite her best efforts.

 

They say **Sam** shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

 

**Odie** is a decent person. [citation needed]

 

**Naive_wanderer** is in her early twenties and has recently become a Homestuck. She likes drawing, and even does other stuff sometimes. It's true; ask anyone. She has never tried to hide her inner giant nerd as the attempt would clearly be futile. She also likes amaretto sours if, you know. In case you were wondering. If you ever wanted to go out sometime. Nah, sorry, she made that weird. Let's just forget it.

 

**ludicrous** is a Homestuck, and has been a Homestuck for about a year now. Sometimes she draws things. Other times, she doesn't. Her hobbies include dinosaur hunting, penguin imitating, and shipping. She ships relentlessly. None are safe from the fury of her multishipping. She is also pursuing a career in Squirrel Training. She's heard it's got good health benefits.

 

Do let's all play the Minister's Gatty!

 _The Minister's Gatty is an abominable Gatty.  
The Minister's Gatty is a beatific Gatty  
The Minister's Gatty is a cerulean Gatty_

No, that's a terribly silly game. The regular variety of Gatty will be quite sufficient, thank you.

Gatty is: eleven kinds of raisin/concave/owner of the silkiest beard in Somerset/a tributary of the Lee Valley/deciduous/my kind of gal/a rebel and she'll never ever be any good/intermittently taken with bouts of [redacted]*

 *** delete as appropriate**


End file.
